She fell asleep among her worries. She was awakened by the noisy
entrance of her spouse. He was hardly recognizable. She thought
at first that her eyes were bleary with sleep, but it was his face
that was bleary. He was what a Flagg caricature of him would be,
with the same merciless truth in the grotesque.
Kedzie had never seen him boozy before. She groaned, expressively,
"My Gawd! you're pie-eyed."
He sang an old song, "The girl guessed right the very first time,
very firstime, verfirstime."
He tried to take her into his arms. She slapped his hands away. He
laughed and flopped into a chair, giggling. She studied him with
almost more interest than repugnance. He was idiotically jovial,
as sly as an idiot and as inscrutable.
Without waiting to be asked he began a recital of his chronicles.
He was as evidently concealing certain things as boasting of others.
Kedzie rather hoped he had done something to conceal, since that
would be an atonement for her own subtleties.
"I have been in Bohemia," he said, "zhenuine old Bohemia where hearts
are true and eyes are blue and ev'body loves ev'body else. Down
there a handclasp is a pledzh of loyalty. There's no hypocrisy
in Bohemia--not a dambit. No, sirree. The idle rish with their
shnobberies and worship of mere--mere someshing or oth' have no
place in Bohemia, for in Bohemia hearsh are true and wine is blue
and--"
"Oh, shut up!" said Kedzie.
"Thass way you're always repressin' me.
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