The bed which he had just left, so far as neatness was concerned, looked very much like Tip, and the room looked like the bed; and they all looked about as badly as dust and rags and poverty could make them look.
After running his fingers through his hair, by way of finishing his toilet, Tip made his way down the rickety stairs to the kitchen.
It seemed as though that kitchen was just calculated to make a boy feel cross. The table stood against the wall on its three legs, the tablecloth was daubed with molasses and stained with gravy; a plate, with something in it which looked like melted lard, but which Tip's mother called butter, and a half loaf of bread, were the only eatable articles as yet on the table; and around these the flies had gathered in such numbers, that it almost seemed as though they might carry the loaf away entirely, if too many of them didn't drown themselves in the butter. Over all the July sun poured in its rays from the eastern window, the only one in the room.
Tip stumbled over his father's boots, and made his way to the stove, where his mother was bending over a spider of sizzling pork.
"Well," she said, as he came near, "did you get up for all day? I'd be ashamed—great boy like you—to lie in bed till this time of day, and let your mother split wood and bring water to cook your breakfast with."
"You cooked, a little for you, too, didn't you?" asked Tip, in a saucy, good-natured tone. "Where's father?"
"Just where you have been all day so far,—in bed and asleep. Such folks as I've got! I'm sick of living."
And Mrs. Lewis stepped back from the steaming tea-kettle, and wiped great beads of perspiration from her forehead; then fanned herself with her big apron, looking meantime very tired and cross.
Yet Tip's mother was not so cross after all as she seemed; had Tip only known it, her heart was very heavy that morning. She did not blame his father for his morning nap, not a bit of it; she was only glad that the weary frame could rest a little after a night of pain. She had been up since the first grey dawn of morning, bathing his head, straightening the tangled bedclothes, walking the floor with the restless baby, in order that her husband might have quiet. Oh no; there were worse women in the world than Mrs. Lewis; but this morning her life looked very wretched to her. She thought of her idle, mischievous boy; of her naughty, high-tempered little girl; of her fat, healthy baby, who took so much of her time; of her husband, who, though she never said it to him, or even to herself, yet she knew and felt was every day growing weaker; and with these came the remembrance that her own tired hands were all that lay between them and want; and it is hardly a wonder that her voice was sharp and her words ill chosen. For this mother tried to bear all her trials alone; she never went for help to the Redeemer, who said,—
"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden."