He had been familiar with his kitchen before. But it had not looked to him just as it looked now.... That broth she was heating was for his wife... to keep her alive. He looked at a row of saucepans with intelligent gaze.
Ellen Murphy tested the broth and went from the room, carrying it with careful hand.
He watched her disappear and looked about the homelike room.... She was going to feed Eleanor. Just outside the door was the ice-box, where he had blundered in the night, breaking up the ice, crushing it for the doctor—they had told him to hurry—hurry!... Ages ago it seemed. And now Eleanor was to have her broth. She was being fed.... Those stew-pans over there were for her. Somehow out of this kitchen, she was to be fed, his baby was being fed—they were all being fed!
IX
He thrust his hands into his pockets and strolled down the back path to the chicken-yard. He peered through the wire at the strutting fowls. His hair was tousled, there were red rims about his eyes—and he had never felt so alive.
The chicken-yard was close to the back fence; on the other side of the fence were chicken-yards that belonged to the houses at the rear.
They were very common people in the houses at the rear. And the houses themselves, facing on the parallel street, were unsightly and small. Richard had taken pains to have no relations with the houses in the rear. He had an instinctive sense that it might lead to complications.
A man was at work in the yard across the fence, digging a post-hole. Richard’s eye fell on him. He came nearer to the fence and leaned on it and looked over. The man looked up.