5. The room in the third-class boarding-house; the mean little hard-coal fire, the slovenly Irish servant-girl making it, the ashes on the hearth, the faded furniture, the private provender hid away in the closet, the dreary back-yard out the window; the young girl at the glass, with her mouth full of hair-pins, doing up her hair to go downstairs and flirt with the young fellows in the parlour.
6. The kitchen of the old farm-house; the young convict just return'd from prison—it was his first offence, and the judges were lenient to him.
He is taking his first meal out of prison; he has been receiv'd back, kiss'd, encourag'd to start again; his lungs, his nostrils expand with the big breaths of free air; with shame, with wonderment, with a trembling joy, his heart too expanding.
The old mother busies herself about the table; she has ready for him the dishes he us'd to like; the father sits with his back to them, reading the newspaper, the newspaper shaking and rustling much; the children hang wondering around the prodigal——they have been caution'd: Do not ask where our Jim has been; only say you are glad to see him.
The elder daughter is there, pale-fac'd, quiet; her young man went back on her four years ago; his folks would not let him marry a convict's sister. She sits by the window, sewing on the children's clothes, the clothes not only patching up; her hunger for children of her own invisibly patching up.
The brother looks up; he catches her eye, he fearful, apologetic; she smiles back at him, not reproachfully smiling, with loving pretence of hope smiling —it is too much for him; he buries his face in the folds of the mother's black gown.
7. The best room of the house, on the Sabbath only open'd; the smell of horse-hair furniture and mahogany varnish; the ornaments on the whatnot in the corner; the wax-fruit, dusty, sunken, sagged in, consumptive-looking, under a glass globe; the sealing-wax imitation of coral; the cigar boxes with shells plastered over; the perforated card-board motto.
The kitchen; the housewife sprinkling the clothes for the fine ironing to-morrow—it is Third-day night, and the plain things are already iron'd, now in cupboards, in drawers stowed away.
The wife waiting for the husband—he is at the tavern, jovial, carousing; she, alone in the kitchen sprinkling clothes—the little red wood clock with peaked top, with pendulum wagging behind a pane of gaily painted glass, strikes twelve.
The sound of the husband's voice on the still night air—he is singing: We won't go home till morning! —the wife arising, toward the wood-shed hastily going, stealthily entering, the voice all the time coming nearer, inebriate, chantant.