AT MIDNIGHT
At midnight the boy had long been sound asleep in bed. The lamp was turned low. It was very quiet in the room—quiet and shadowy in all the tenement.... And the stair creaked; and footfalls shuffled along the hall—and hesitated at the door of the place where the child lay quietly sleeping; and there ceased. There was the rumble of a man's voice, deep, insistent, imperfectly restrained. A woman protested. The door was softly opened; and the boy's mother stepped in, moving on tiptoe, and swiftly turned to bar entrance with her arm.
"Hist!" she whispered, angrily. "Don't speak so loud. You'll wake the boy."
"Let me in, Millie," the man insisted. "Aw, come on, now!"
"I can't, Jim. You know I can't. Go on home now. Stop that! I won't marry you. Let go my arm. You'll wake the boy, I tell you!"
There was a short scuffle: at the end of which, the woman's arm still barred the door.
"Here I ain't seen you in three year," the man complained. "And you won't let me in. That ain't right, Millie. It ain't kind to an old friend like me. You didn't used to be that way."