“Well, when I unhitched the horse and got him tended to and the potatoes covered up and all, I took the steak and started for the house. You know where I live—the barn is just back of the cottage, and there’s a kind of little alley behind the barn and then the switch-yards come in; the railroad curves up toward the house after it passes the barn so it gets pretty near the kitchen. Of course, the trains bother us a good deal and the switch engines are goin’ back and forth all the time, and the house is pretty old and not very big, but all them things has to be taken into consideration in the rent, and I got it enough cheaper to make up. I presume that’s the reason no poor people live out on the avenues, because the rents is so high, and in one way mebbe the switch tracks is a good thing, for if it wa’n’t for them I’d had to go out to the stock yards to live, and I’d rather have the engines and the smoke than the smell. Some of them Settlement people are tryin’ to have a park made, out along the tracks right close to where we lived. Of course, flowers and grass would be nice, but I s’pose if they got the park some fellers would come along and pay more rent than we could afford and then we’d have to go out to the stock yards. It seems as if us poor people gets the worst of it no matter how you fix it. But I’m takin’ an awful long while to get into the house; seems as if I’m tellin’ you everything I’ve thought of ever since I’ve been locked up here in jail. It’s mighty good of you to set and listen, and I’ll always remember it as long as I live, though I guess that ain’t sayin’ much. “When I come up to the door I heard the kid cryin’ and she was scoldin’ him about somethin’ he’d done and tellin’ him to go in the bedroom and stay till supper was ready and to quit his squallin’ or she’d thrash him. Of course, generally, she was good to him, and I don’t mean to say she wa’n’t, but sometimes she got out of patience with him, same as all women does, I s’pose. Of course you have to make allowances for her. She dassent let the boy go to play back of the house, for there was the yards and the cars, and you know children always goes ‘round cars; then she couldn’t let him go in front for the electric road was there, and you know about that little boy bein’ run over a year ago down at the corner. Then there’s buildin’s on both sides of us, so she had to have the kid right in the house all the time less’n she went out with him, and of course he got kind of tired settin’ in the house all day with nothin’ to do but look out in front and see the switch engines. Still I sometimes thought she was crosser to him than she ought to have been at that.