It was a small room, almost bare, the bedstead of blistered iron, the mattress thin, the bedding tattered and worn. A soapbox was the chair on which Nellie had been sitting; there was no other. Against the wall, above a rough shelf, was a piece of mirror-glass without a frame. The window in the sloping roof was uncurtained. On the poor bed, under the tattered sheet, was the dead baby. And on the floor, writhing, was its mother, Mrs. Macanany trying to comfort her between the pauses of her own vehement neighbourly grief.
Nellie closed the dead baby's eyes, set the candle on the shelf and moved to the door where Mr. Hobbs stood bewildered and dumbfoundered, his pipe still in his hand. "Speak to her!" she whispered to him. "It's very hard for her."
Mr. Hobbs looked hopelessly at his pipe. He did not recollect where to put it. Nellie, understanding, took it from his fingers and pushed him gently by the arm towards his wife. He knelt down by the weeping woman's side and put his hands on the head that was bent to the ground. "Sue," he said, huskily, not knowing what to say. "Don't take on so! It's better for 'im."
"It's not better," she cried in answer, kneeling up and frantically throwing her arms across the bed. "How can it be better? Oh, God! I wish I was dead. Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
"Don't, Sue!" begged Mr. Hobbs, weeping in a clumsy way, as men usually do.
"It's not right," cried the mother, rolling her head, half-crazed. "It's not right, Jack. It's not right. It didn't ought to have died. It didn't ought to have died, Jack. It wouldn't if it had a chance, but it hadn't a chance. It didn't have a chance, Jack. It didn't have a chance."
"Don't, Sue!" begged Mr. Hobbs again. "You did what you could."
"I didn't," she moaned. "I didn't. I didn't do what I could. There were lots of things I might have done that I didn't. I wasn't as kind as I might have been. I was cross to it and hasty. Oh, my God, my God! Why couldn't I have died instead? Why couldn't I? Why don't we all die? It's not right. It's not right. Oh, my God, my God!"
And she thought God, whatever that is, did not hear and would not answer, she not knowing that in her own pain and anguish were the seeds of progression and in her cries the whetting of the sickle wherewith all wrongs are cut down when they are ripe for the reaper. So she wept and lamented, bewailing her dead, rebellious and self-reproachful.
"Take the baby, dear?" quoth Mrs. Macanany, reappearing from a descent to the kitchen with a six months' infant squalling in her arms. "Give it a drink now! It'll make you feel better."