Birthday Party by C.H.B. Kitchin

Author:C.H.B. Kitchin [Kitchin, C.H.B.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2014-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

If Joan were here, she’d laugh and agree with me.

Chapter VII: DORA CARLICE

THE house is very full of noises to-night. That must be a big moth flapping over there by the window. Tan has clumped downstairs again. Whatever for? Why can’t he settle in his basket? Poor Tan, if I do get a little flat, how he will hate it. But Ronnie won’t want him, and he seems to think he belongs to me. I suppose that’s because I’m here nearly all the time.

That noise didn’t come from the stairs. That was the morning-room, or even the gunroom. I used to think you couldn’t hear noises in old houses, but you can. We had noises in Elmcroft, of course, but they were different. You knew what and where they were. There is one thing, this furniture doesn’t creak. I suppose it’s too old. The dressing-table I chose for my twenty-first birthday present used to scare me terribly at Elmcroft, till I found out that it was the fitting of the mirror. Cheap new wood. I wonder who’s got that dressing-table now. It fetched twenty-six shillings in the sale, and Daddy paid eighteen pounds. It just shows you.

It’s silly to think we’re going to be burgled, just because it’s after midnight. We were burgled once here, and it happened when the house was full of people, all dressing for dinner. And our two burglaries at Elmcroft weren’t at night either. One was in the morning, about ten o’clock, and the other—if you can call it a burglary—he just ran in and took the silver tray from the hall-table—at three in the afternoon. The silly maid had left the front door open.

I shall never get to sleep if I go on thinking like this. But I can’t stop thinking. And reading seems to tire my eyes now. I suppose I ought to see an oculist and get glasses. Oh dear! The things one has to do as one gets older. And I ought to go to the dentist again soon. I know he’ll want me to have those two out, and begin hinting at a small plate which will screw my mouth into a funny shape. I wish I hadn’t such a tiny mouth. There’s no advantage in it, and people don’t admire them nowadays.

Perhaps the reason I’ve been sleeping badly is because I take a nap in the afternoon. But I feel so sleepy after lunch. I can’t help dozing off. And I like it. When I’m alone here, there’s nothing to do but go to bed early. But even when I’m not alone and go to bed late I often don’t sleep either. Would it be any good seeing a doctor, I wonder? He’d only give me some feeble little powders and say I ought to have a change of air.

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