Aroused by the violent banging of the street door, Mrs. Chester starts from the bed. The rain is softly pattering in the street, and she hears the sound of uncertain footsteps groping up the stairs.
"It is the new lodger," she murmurs. "He might have made less noise with the door." Then, rubbing her eyes, she calls, "Sally, are you awake?"
Sally hears her mother's voice through a mist of softly falling rain, and murmuring some indistinct words in reply, cuddles closer to her treasure-baby, and the next moment is asleep again.
"The brute!" exclaims Mrs. Chester. "Waking the children with his row! I'll talk to him to-morrow."
Standing in the dark, she listens. The person who is ascending the stairs to the bedroom in the upper part of the house staggers and stumbles on his way. Thus much Mrs. Chester is conscious of, but she does not hear his low moans, nor see him shake and tremble, as he drags his feet along in fear and dread. When he reaches his room, he falls, dressed, upon the bed, and claws at the air, and picks at the bedclothes in ceaseless unrest, being beset by demons of every shape and form, presenting themselves in a thousand monstrously-grotesque disguises.
Mrs. Chester has heard sufficient to cause her to form a just conclusion.
"Drunk of course," she murmurs; "and Dick'll be as bad when he comes home."
Then she lights a candle, and patiently resumes her task of stitching and patching.