Gentlemen prefer blondes - Anita Loos [41]
So yesterday we all got up early and that was when I met all of Henry’s family, because Henry and I motored down to Pennsylvania and everybody was in bed when we arrived because it was after nine o’clock. So in the morning Henry’s mother came to my room to get me up in time for breakfast because Henry’s mother is very very fond of me, and she always wants to copy all of my gowns and she always loves to look through all of my things to see what I have got. So she found a box of liqueur candies that are full of liqueurs and she was really very delighted. So I finally got dressed and she threw the empty box away and I helped her down stairs to the dining room.
So Henry was waiting in the dining room with his sister and that was when I met his sister. So it seems that Henry’s sister has never been the same since the war, because she never had on a man’s collar and a necktie until she drove an ambulants in the war, and now they cannot get her to take them off. Because ever since the armistice Henry’s sister seems to have the idea that regular womens clothes are effiminate. So Henry’s sister seems to think of nothing but either horses or automobiles and when she is not in a garage the only other place she is happy in is a stable. I mean she really pays very little attention to all of her family and she seems to pay less attention to Henry than anybody else because she seems to have the idea that Henry’s brains are not so viril. So then we all waited for Henry’s father to come in so that he could read the Bible out loud before breakfast.
So then something happened that really was a miracle. Because it seems that Henry’s father has practically lived in a wheel chair for months and months and his male nurse has to wheel him everywhere. So his male nurse wheeled him into the dining room in his wheel chair and then Henry said “Father, this is going to be your little daughter in law,” and Henry’s father took one good look at me and got right out of his wheel chair and walked! So then everybody was very very surprised, but Henry was not so surprised because Henry knows his father like a book. So then they all tried to calm his father down, and his father tried to read out of the Bible but he could hardly keep his mind on the Bible and he could hardly eat a bite because when a gentleman is as feeble as Henry’s father is, he cannot keep one eye on a girl and the other eye on his cereal and cream without coming to grief. So Henry finally became quite discouradged and he told his father he would have to get back to his room or he would have a relapse. So then the male nurse wheeled him back to his room and it really was pathetic because he cried like a baby. So I got to thinking over what Dorothy advised me about Henry’s father and I really got to thinking that if Henry’s father could only get away from everybody and have some time of his own, Dorothy’s advise might not be so bad after all.
So after breakfast we all got ready to go to church, but Henry’s sister does not go to church because Henry’s sister always likes to spend every Sunday in the garage taking their Ford farm truck apart and putting it back together again, and Henry says that what the war did to a girl like his sister is really worse than the war itself.
So then Henry and his mother and I all went to church. So we came home from church and we had luncheon and it seems that luncheon is practically the same as breakfast except that Henry’s father could not come down to luncheon because after he met me he contracted such a vialent fever that they had to send for the Doctor.
So in the afternoon Henry went to prayer meeting and I was left alone with Henry’s mother so that we could rest up so that we could go to church again after supper. So Henry’s mother thinks I am nothing but sunshine and she will hardly let me get out of her sight, because she hates to be by herself because, when she is by herself, her brains hardly seem to work at all.