Mrs. Blank
had invited him in to afternoon tea, or if he had been waiting for a
change in the weather.

Conditions in the boarding-house had the value of distracting Dave's
attention from the unpleasantness of his work. Mrs. Metford,
handicapped by her numerous offspring, embittered by the regular
recurrence of her contributions to the State, and disheartened by
drudgery and overwork, had long ago ceased to place any store on
personal appearance or even cleanliness. As Dave watched her slovenly
shuffle to and from the kitchen, preceded and pursued by young Metfords
in all degrees of childish innocence, his mind flew back to dim
recollections of his own mother, and the quiet, noiseless order of
their home. Even in the latter days, when he and his father had been
anything but model housekeepers, they had never known such squalor as
this.

Metford's attitude toward his wife fluctuated from course humour to
brutality, but there was left in the woman no spark of spirit to
resist. With neither tongue nor eye did she make any response, and her
shufflings back and forth were neither hastened nor delayed by the
pleasure of her lord. Her bearing was that of one who has suffered
until the senses are numb, who has drunk the last dregs of bitterness,
for whom no possible change of condition can be worse. Her
indifference was tragic.

The sleeping accommodations had the virtue of simplicity. The Metford
tribe was housed in a lean-to which supported one wall of the kitchen,
and the eight boarders slept upstairs over the main part of the house.
The room was not large, but it had four corners, and in each corner
stood a cheap iron bed with baggy springs and musty mattress. The
ceiling, none too high at any part, sloped at the walls almost to the
edges of the beds. One table and wash basin had to serve for the eight
lodgers; those who were impatient for their turn might omit their
ablutions altogether or perform them in the horse-trough at the barn.

All Metford's employees, with the exception of Dave, were foreigners,
more or less inconversant with the English language. Somewhat to his
surprise, they maintained an attitude of superiority toward him,
carrying on their conversations in a strange tongue, and allowing him
little part in their common life. Dave's spirit, which had always been
accustomed to receive and be received on a basis of absolute equality,
rebelled violently against the intangible wall of exclusion whic