it, I
glanced around it as I had done at the front room, the two seeming to
complete the suite occupied by Mrs. Gibbons. My survey was quick and
cautious, but not too much so for mental noting of the conservation
of time and space and labor represented by an arrangement of
household effects I had never seen before. Health and comfort were
the principal omissions.
In one corner of the room was a bed covered with a calico quilt of
many colors, and under it a pallet, tucked away for convenience in
the daytime, but obviously out at night. Close to the bed was a
large stove in which a good fire was burning, and from the
blue-and-white saucepan on the top came forth odor of a soup with
which I was not familiar. The door of the oven was partly open, and
in the latter could be seen a pan of heavy-looking biscuits which
apparently awaited their devouring at any time that suited the desire
of the devourer. Bettina looked at them and then at me, but she said
nothing--that is, nothing out loud.
"Set down." Mrs. Gibbons, the baby still in her arms, made effort to
dust one of the two chairs in the room with the gingham apron she was
wearing, and, after failing, motioned me to take it. The other one
she pushed toward Bettina with her foot. On the bed was a little
girl of six or seven, and as we took our seats a boy, who barely
looked ten, came from behind a couple of wash-tubs in an opposite
corner of the room and wiped his hands on a towel hanging from a hook
in the wall. To ask something concerning this boy was the purpose of
our visit.
"Speak to the lady, Jimmy. Anybody would think you didn't have no
manners! No, you can't have your supper yet."
Mrs. Gibbons waved her hand weakly at her son, who, smiling at us,
had gone to a corner cupboard with perforated tins of diamond pattern
in its doors, and taken therefrom a soup-plate and cup and saucer.
Paying no attention to his mother's reference to a delayed meal, he
ladled out of the big saucepan, with a cracked cup, a plate of the
steaming soup, and carried it carefully to an oilcloth-covered table,
on which was a lamp and glass pitcher, some unwashed dishes left from
the last meal, a broken doll, and a child's shoe. Putting down the
plate of soup, he came back to the stove and poured out a cup of
feeble-looking coffee.
"Goin' to be extras out to-night and I mightn't get back till after
ten." Again his gay little smile lighted his thin face. "Ifen I
don't ea
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