Free Love Lies Dreaming by C S Forester Page B

sort of story youought to have told a young woman. But—but—I’m glad the steamer arrived in time.”
    She gave a little jump toward me, and I felt her bare arms about my neck for a moment, and a little rose-petal kiss. Then she skipped away. At her bedroom door she turned and looked back for an instant, and her eyes were like stars.
    â€œGood night, dear,” said she, and yet she shut that door with all her old decision. Constance has puzzled me properly this time.

Chapter VI
    On Sunday mornings we always have boiled eggs for breakfast. The reason for this is that it is I upon whom falls the duty of preparing breakfast on Sundays, and the boiling of eggs is the most complicated cookery which Constance will entrust to me. Despite my protests, despite my boasted Army experience, she will not permit me to try my hand even upon the harmless necessary rasher, and assuredly is she convinced that omelettes, kidneys and kippers are far beyond my powers. So that on Sunday mornings I totter out of bed into a charwoman-less world, to find in the kitchen the tray ready laid for me, and the eggs already selected for placing in the saucepan, and, having prepared the breakfast, I take it in to where Constance is still sleeping the sleep of those with no conscience at all.
    Since Constance has been shingled there is no sign of her when I enter the room. Once upon a time there was generally a pigtail at least protruding from between the sheets, but nowadays there is nothing at allexcept for a curved hump apparent under the eiderdown. I put the tray down with a thump on the bedside table and summon her to wake up, or, if I am feeling musically inclined, I beat a reveille on a cup with a spoon. There follows a groan and a slight agitation of the hump beneath the eiderdown. Usually the agitation subsides. I have to increase the din before Constance’s flushed face emerges from between the sheets, and there have been occasions when I have had to peel the bedclothes back to uncover the pink pearl they enclose.
    Generally Constance’s first remark is:—“Is it ten o’clock already?” and she has to rub her eyes and smooth back her tousled hair for quite a while before she can realize fully that she is awake once more at the beginning of yet another day. How she manages it passes my comprehension entirely. I simply can not understand how it is that any one who has become accustomed to waking at a certain hour can on occasions continue to sleep three hours beyond that time. It is a gift which I envy Constance most heartily, but she finds the fact that I do not possess it very convenient on Sunday mornings.
    Then I drag up a chair and pour out tea (we have tea on Sundays because Constance will not trust me to make coffee) and pass things to Constance, and do my best to see that she does not appropriate more than her fair share of breakfast. However sleepy Constance may be on my first awakening of her, she is soon wide enough awake to take, on occasions, what I can not help thinking is an unfair advantage of my preoccupation in pouring out tea, to steal the last piece of toast from under my very eyes.
    This morning things were a little different. Instead of creeping softly out of bed from beside a somnolent Constance I had to rise from a solitary bed in a study, which, to my jaundiced gaze, triumphantly proclaimed itself a mere study and not a connubial sleeping apartment.
    And when I brought in the breakfast to Constance’s room I found her awake—wide awake, and sitting up in bed with her hair already smoothed down and looking expectantly for breakfast. We said little while we ate it. Breakfast is not a time when we are either of us conversationally inclined. But afterward, with the trap pushed aside and cigarettes alight andmyself seated comfortably on the bedside with the corner of the eiderdown over me, Constance was more inclined to talk. I was not. I was more inclined to look round the room