There were evenings when Carrie, who loved the tyranny of things with
what must have been a survival within her of the bazaar instinct, would
fall asleep almost directly after dinner her head back against her
husband's shoulder, roundly tired out after a day all cluttered up with
matching the blue upholstery of their bedroom with taffeta bed hangings.
Latz liked her so, with her fragrantly coiffured head, scarcely gray,
back against his shoulder and with his newspapers--Wall Street journals
and the comic weeklies which he liked to read--would sit an entire
evening thus, moving only when his joints rebelled, and his pipe smoke
carefully directed away from her face.
Weeks and weeks of this and already Louis Latz's trousers were a little
out of crease and Mrs. Latz after eight o'clock and under cover of a
very fluffy and very expensive negligee, would unhook her stays.
Sometimes friends came in for a game of small-stake poker, but after the
second month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday night
musical comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter to
remain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, as
many as four evenings a week Mrs. Latz dozed there against her husband's
shoulder, until about ten, when he kissed her awake to forage with him
in the great, white porcelain refrigerator and then to bed.
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