“If I have a chance to make it, I will,” promised Ben, as he gently placed the boy on the steps and forced to his face a smile that robbed it in a remarkable way of its uncomeliness.
“I don’t s’pose we ken begin now?”
“It’s too late to-night, and I’m in a hurry. We’ll have to put it off, Jimmy.”
The smile vanished from his face the moment he passed round the corner of the house on his way to the back door. “Poor little Jimmy!” he thought. “I can’t help you make your squirrel-cage, as I’m not going to stay here long enough to do it.”
He ascended the narrow, uncarpeted stairs to his small, uncarpeted room over the kitchen, where a loose board rattled beneath his feet, and the dull light from a single window showed him the old-fashioned, low-posted, corded bedstead—with its straw tick, coarse sheets and patchwork quilt—pushed back beneath the sloping rafters of the roof.
Besides the bed, there was in the room for furniture a broken-backed rocking-chair; a small table with a split top, on which stood a common kerosene hand-lamp; a dingy white earthen water pitcher and bowl—the former with a circular piece broken out of its nose—sitting on a washstand, made of a long box stood on one end, with a muslin curtain hanging in front of it. His trunk was pushed into a corner of the room opposite the bed.
Another part of the room, which served as a wardrobe, or was intended for that purpose, was set off by a calico curtain. The kitchen chimney ran up through one end of the room and served to heat it a little—a very little.
Such a room as this was the best Ben Stone could afford to pay for from his meager savings. He had been satisfied, and had thought it would do him very well; for Mrs. Jones had genially assured him that on evenings when the weather became colder he would be welcome to sit and study by the open fire in the sitting-room, a concession for which he had been duly grateful.
But now he would need it no more; his hopes, his plans, his dreams were ended. He sat down dumbly on the broken chair, his hard, square hands lying helpless in his lap. The shadows of the dingy little chamber crept upon him from the corners; and the shadows of his life hovered thick about him.
Finally he became aware of the smell of cooking, which came to him from below, and slowly the consciousness that he was hungry grew upon him. It did not matter; he told himself so. There was in his heart a greater hunger that might never be satisfied.