In a small cottage, at the end of a row of larger houses, a woman is busy clearing away the fragments of a none too bountiful supper. A small woman, with a sour visage, and not one ounce of flesh on her person, that is not absolutely needed to screen from mortal gaze a bone. A woman with a long, sharp nose, two bright, ferret-like brown eyes, and a rasping voice, that seems to have worn itself thin asking hard questions of Providence, from sunrise till dark.
The table has been spread for two, but the second party at the banquet, a gamin son aged seven, has swallowed his own and all he could get of his mother's share, and betakened himself to the streets, night though it be.
The woman moves about, now and then muttering to herself as she works. The room is shabbily furnished, and not over neat, for its mistress spends her days in the great mill hard by, and housekeeping has become a secondary matter. Only the needs of life find their demands honored in this part of W——. Too often needs get choked and die of the smoke and the cinders.
It is late, for the woman has been doing extra work; it is stormy, too, blustering and spattering rain. Yet she pauses occasionally and listens to a passing footfall, as though she expected a visitor.
At last, when the final touch has made the room as tidy as it ever is, or as she thinks it need be, there comes a shuffling of feet outside, and a tremendous thump on the rickety door. After which, as if he was sufficiently heralded, in comes a man, a big man, muffled to the eyes in a huge coat, which he slowly draws down and draws off, disclosing to the half curious, half contemptuous gaze of the woman the auburn locks and highly tinted countenance of Mr. John Burrill.
"So," she says, in her shrillest voice, "It's you, is it? It seems one is never to be rid of you at any price."
"Yes, it's me—all of me," the man replies, as if confirming a doubtful statement. "Why, now; you act as if you didn't expect me."
"And no more I did," says the woman sullenly and most untruthfully. "It's a wonder to me that you can't stay away from here, after all that's come and gone."
"Well, I can't," he retorts, amiably rubbing his hands together. "Anyhow, I won't, which means about the same thing. Where's the little duffer?"
"He's where you were at his age, I expect," she replies grimly.