"You're my dream, Min," Clair explained. "I'm not comfortable with the hardness of men and bull dykes make me nervous. Let's just say they're unattrac...ive. I need my lover to be strong and tough and yet soft and gentle. I need her to rule our roost yet listen and care what I say, to respect me despite my passiveness and frailty." You're not frail, at least not in bed." We laughed and Clair blushed."I love your smile and your sweet, kind eyes," said Clair."And I think you're adorable and way too. Although he couldn’t remember much of the morning, by mid-afternoon Tobias had revived somewhat due to a plentiful supply of tea and cake during his visits. So he arrived back at the vicarage feeling slightly less delicate. As he took off his coat, he espied an object in the hall table that did not ordinarily belong there. The workaday furnishing was now adorned by a splendidly oversized and colourful bonnet.This signature headgear could only belong to one lady (who was not quite a lady) of his. All around me was family. There were weatherworn markers here with dates that extended back before the American Civil War. One headstone, I knew, sat over the empty grave of a great-great uncle who never returned from the infamous Union prison camp in Elmira. The family just couldn’t let him not be represented. I wonder how amused they were that in some backhanded way, I was now a soldier of the Confederacy, and that I held a string of slaves.Every stone in this low-walled area was chiseled. "Oh, Betsy won't be back till Monday. Come on in!"I soon had a large mug of steaming English Breakfast in my hands. Melanie and I sipped our tea and chatted for a while about the success of the Spirit landing, and how our classes were going. Melanie is one of the top students of her class. I'm also doing fine, but not quite at that level.It had been pretty exciting, cheering the signal of a successful landing at Kresge, but shortly after midnight we both decided we were too sleepy to stay up.