When Catherine went in to look at her she could not help thinking how death had made her look ridiculous. She was lying under the window, and the lamp in the middle of the ceiling threw her features into heavy shadow. There was a piece of sticking-plaster over the cut on her forehead, and her chin was bruised as well. The most prominent of her front teeth had broken off half-way, and as, seemingly, she had died gasping for breath, her mouth was wide open. The massive, almost masculine jaws hung unsymmetrically: there was no beauty or calm in her last attitude. She looked as if she had died fighting. An aperture in the drawn Venetian blinds allowed a slit of pale light from the street lamp outside to cross her face diagonally, making it appear more grotesque than ever. Catherine could scarcely believe it was her mother. She had the old workaday blouse on, because she had gone out shopping in a mackintosh and had thought it would not show underneath. Catherine could not help thinking how ashamed her mother would have been at the thought of being seen in this blouse by all the neighbours, and especially to have had the neighbours crowding in her own drawing-room with all the cheap bamboo furniture and the faded carpet, and the “Present from Margate” on the mantel-piece, and the certificate on the wall certifying that John Weston, aged twelve, had achieved merit in writing an essay on “Alcohol and its Effects on the Human Body.” (This latter would have been removed long since, had it not successfully covered up a hole in the wallpaper.) ... Catherine felt sure that if her mother had known she was going to die, she would have dressed up for the occasion. But it had come upon her unexpectedly. There she was, with her shabby blouse and her ghastly face, and her mackintosh and string-bag on the chair beside her. There was some tea in the bag, and her fall had burst the paper wrapper, for the latter was half-full, and there were tea grains about the floor.... Mr. Weston had been sent for. He came in tired after a tiresome day, plus the usual Monday feeling of discontent. He was in a bad temper. “Hell!” he muttered, as he bashed his shins against the piano in the gloom. “These blinds ...” he began, and checked himself. He seemed annoyed that she had done such a dramatic, unexpected thing. He was annoyed that there was no supper ready for him. “You might have got me a cup of tea ready,” he said to Catherine. Then he tried to be conventional. “She was a good woman,” he said, as if it had just occurred to him. When the strange woman had departed, and Catherine and he were sitting down in the kitchen to a frugal supper, he began the conversation again. “By the way,” he said, “apparently you didn’t go to school to-day. Mrs. Jopson thought you’d be staying to the evening-class, and sent a message to the school to fetch you. Miss Forsdyke said you hadn’t been present at all to-day.... Is that so?” “I didn’t go to-day,” admitted Catherine.