Samuel Johnson Is Indignant Read Online Free PDF

saying, there will be some small part of it she disagrees with.
    When she does agree with him, she suspects her own motives: she may agree with him only so that at some future time she will be able to remind him that she does sometimes agree with him.
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    Old Mother has her favorite armchair, and the Grouch has his. Sometimes, when the Grouch is not at home, Old Mother sits in his chair, and then she also picks up what he has been reading and reads it herself.
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    Old Mother is dissatisfied with the way they spend their evenings together and imagines other activities such as taking walks, writing letters, and seeing friends. She proposes these activities to the Grouch, but the Grouch becomes angry. He does not like her to organize anything in his life. Now the way they spend this particular evening is quarreling over what she has said.
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    Both the Grouch and Old Mother want to make love, but he wants to make love before the movie, whereas she wants to make love either during it or after. She agrees to before, but then if before, wants the radio on. He prefers the television and asks her to take her glasses off. She agrees to the television, but prefers to lie with her back to it. Now he can’t see it over her shoulder because she is lying on her side. She can’t see it because she is facing him and her glasses are off. He asks her to move her shoulder.
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    Old Mother hears the footsteps of the Grouch in the lower hall as he leaves the living room on his way to bed. She looks around the bedroom to see what will bother him. She removes her feet from his pillow, stands up from his side of the bed, turns off a few lights, takes her slippers out of his way into the room, and shuts a dresser drawer. But she knows she has forgotten something. What he complains about first is the wrinkled sheets, and then the noise of the white mice running in their cage in the next room.
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    â€œMaybe I could help with that,” says Old Mother sincerely as they are driving in the car, but after what she did the night before she knows he will not want to think of her as a helpful person. The Grouch only snorts.
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    Old Mother shares a small triumph with the Grouch, hoping he will congratulate her. He remarks that some day she will not bother to feel proud of that sort of thing.
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    â€œI slept like a log,” he says in the morning. “What about you?”
    Well, most of the night was fine, she explains, but toward morning she slept lightly trying to keep still in a position that did not hurt her neck. She was trying to keep still so as not to bother him, she adds. Now he is angry.
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    â€œHow did you sleep?” she asks him as he comes downstairs late.
    â€œNot very well,” he answers. “I was awake around 1:30. You were still up.”
    â€œNo, I wasn’t still up at 1:30,” she says.
    â€œ12:30, then.”
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    â€œYou were very restless,” says the Grouch in the morning. “You kept tossing and turning.”
    â€œDon’t accuse me,” says Old Mother.
    â€œI’m not accusing you, I’m just stating the facts. You were very restless.”
    â€œAll right: the reason I was restless was that you were snoring.”
    Now the Grouch is angry. “I don’t snore.”
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    Old Mother is lying on the bathroom floor reading, her head on a small stack of towels and a pillow, a bath towel covering her, because she has not been able to sleep and doesn’t want to disturb the Grouch. She falls asleep there on the bathroom floor, goes back to bed, wakes again, returns to the bathroom, and continues to read. Finally the Grouch, having woken up because she was gone, comes to the door and offers her some earplugs.
    The Grouch wants to listen to Fischer-Dieskau singing, accompanied by Brendel at the piano, but to his annoyance he finds that Fischer-Dieskau accompanied by Brendel is also accompanied by Old Mother humming, and he asks her to