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I suppose I had better have left it alone. I was told that for others such a period of incapability might exist, but not for her. She knew the duties of a proper housewife, and did not attend to a fifth part of things and leave the rest in dirt and disorder.
It was a little too much that I should not only come and interfere in her housekeeping, but ascribe to her a fictitious illness that only existed in my imagination.... And then followed a long story which to listen to was enough to make one laugh and weep together. Goodness! she had actually been jealous of my former régime, and had no peace till she had turned the whole house topsy-turvy. She didn’t intend that I should know this. But the storm burst when she thought to-day I had been taking my revenge. Her one object in life was to live for her husband, her home, and her children, and she had no notions about posing as a beauty, and be painted by famous artists. And so on....
She was so beside herself finally, that I was obliged to cave in, and say that I had made a mistake, she was not at the dangerous age, and her scouring mania was a perfectly natural instinct, and it was a pity that all housewives did not follow her example.
And then we were good friends again, and she told me that she was very glad I was really quite old.
Any woman so old and harmless, of course didn’t count.
No, I shall not burn my fingers again. It is most curious how forgetful one becomes with the flight of years.
But forgetful is not exactly the right word. It is much more a sort of half-unconscious perversion of actual facts. The same kind of thing as parents making out to their children and almost believing it themselves, that when they were children they were absolute angels.