She would cross the High Street, and, diving down a dim and narrow alley, make a purchase at a shop, and hurry on. Entering her door, she would pause, trying to tell by listening whether her husband had returned; this she always did, although in fact it made no difference to her going up, since in any case her sons were there, waiting to be fed. Silently passing up the narrow stairs, whose noticeable odour she never noticed, she would enter the front room. Here her four sons, their eyes fixed on the door, would be sitting or sprawling on the bed, teasing each other angrily, like young birds waiting for a meal. Taking off her hat, she would sit down to rest. But seeing her thus sitting, doing nothing, her sons would try to rouse her to activity, pulling her by the sleeve, jogging her chair, and the youngest, perhaps, kissing her with his little dirty mouth. Rising, she would begin to peel potatoes. She peeled them fast, working the upturned knife-blade close to her thin bosom, and round her the boys, affecting not to care now that they saw her working, resumed their restless teasing of each other, casting impatient glances at the busy knife-blade, the falling yellow slips of peel. At short intervals, when she was not too deadly tired, she would snap at them a little, but her power of speech was limited; the things she said had all been said before--her sons did not attend to them too much. Yet, they were good to her according to their lights, preferring her company to their father’s. Presently her knife would stay suspended, the voices of her sons would cease; the footsteps of their father had been heard. He would come in, in an old green overcoat, a muffler, and heavy boots; on his heavy face the look that says: My ways are what my life has made them--the proper ways for me to go! And according to his mood, sometimes jocular and sometimes sullen, there would be talk or silence, and through those silences the clipping of the knife at the potatoes would be heard, the sounds of cooking, and of washing, and of the making up of beds, and latest of all, the tiny sound of stitching.