With the Sunday suits of “reach-me-downs” to place them in a row.

There was this to patch, and that to darn, and something else to mend;

She would see to every single thing before her work would end,

To the dresses and the pinnies—oh, the memory she had!—

There were lace-up boots for Morgan, and a clean white shirt for Dad.

And the hubbub and the murder that the household used to make,

When she had us tumbled out of bed, and painfully awake.

Here a voice in anguish lifted to announce a button gone;

Someone calling from the back-room “Mum, what socks will I put on?”

While “Himself” was like a Bolshevik athirst for human blood,