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Hughes, Rupert, 1872-1956

"We Can't Have Everything"

He snorted, bored his fists
into his eyes, yawned, scratched his head, stared at the unusual
furniture, flounced over, saw his mate, stared again, grinned,
said:
"Why, hello, Anita!"
He put out his hand to her. She wiggled away; he followed. She
slid to the floor and gasped:
"Don't touch me!"
"Why, what's the matter, honey?"
"Huh! What isn't the matter?"
He fumbled under the pillow for his watch, looked at it, yawned:
"Lord, it's only five o'clock. Good _night_!" He disposed
himself for sleep again. The parrot broke out in another horrible
Ha-ha! He sat up with an oath. "I'd like to murder the beast."
"Don't! I'm much obliged to it."
"Obliged to it? You must be crazy. Good Lord! hear it scream."
"Well, ain't life a scream?"
Gilfoyle was a graceless sleeper and a surly waker. He forgot that
he was a bridegroom.
He sniffed, yawned, flopped, buried one ear in the pillow and pulled
the cover over the other and almost instantly slept. His head on
the pillow looked like some ugly, shaggy vegetable. Kedzie wanted to
uproot the object and throw it out of the window, out of her life.
That was the head of her husband, the lord and master of her dreams!
Dainty-minded couples have separate bedrooms. Ordinary people accept
the homely phases of coexistence as inevitable and therefore
unimportant. They grow to enjoy the intimacy: they give and take
informality as one of the comforts of a home. They see frowsy hair
and unshaven cheeks and yawns as a homely, wholesome part of life
and make a pleasant indolence of them.


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