The stairs are taller than they used to be.
I have, over the long course of a long life, navigated the stairs of this house many thousands of times. I know each one. I hold firm opinions on three of them, and the rest I have simply tolerated.
Lately, however, the stairs have become — most inconveniently — taller. Not in any literal sense, you understand. Simply taller in the way that things become taller when one is, oneself, rather tired. One is, oneself, very tired.
The Bald Man has noticed. He does not say anything about it. He simply, when he sees me considering the stairs, picks me up and walks me up them as though it were nothing — as though it were the regular way of going up stairs, as though the stairs had not gone up at all. He sets me down at the top and pretends he was going that way anyway.
The youth go up the stairs at considerable speed and usually sideways. I do not begrudge them this. I am simply not, at present, prepared to comment.
I find the man's lifting quite unbearably kind. I shan't be discussing the matter further. Mmh.