Brought up in Philadelphia until his tenth year, Thomas Beckett had received a rudimentary training in the public schools, and this training, after coming to the Point, he had managed to eke out with haphazard reading. But the cheerless surroundings had fostered in him a tendency to indulge fits of melancholy. Without visible cause, he would become taciturn. When he was twenty-one his father urged him to marry and settle down, but domestic life had small attraction for Thomas, and it was a surprise to the old man when he finally acted on the suggestion. At the time of his marriage the young lobsterman was thirty years old, tall and broad shouldered, with bold intelligent eyes gazing out from beneath heavy brows, and a moustached lip that, as he spoke, lifted slightly, showing the tips of the white teeth. One raw day he had sailed away from the Point with a cargo of lobsters, and a fortnight later had returned with the meek and fragile Lavina. During the short period of her wedded life the young wife had contributed to the house of the father and son an air of comfort. Geraniums had bloomed at the windows and the curtains of the front room had been kept white; all the beds had been covered with bright patch-work quilts and the dishes had been washed as soon as used and arranged in gleaming rows in the cupboard. But from the hour of Thomas's desertion, Lavina had relaxed her care of the house. Now, after her death, the change in it was complete. The curtains were dingy, the plants dead, fish-heads from the dog's dish littered the kitchen floor and flies buzzed about the rich messes Nora Gage was constantly preparing for her own consumption. The deterioration in the home suggested a picture by Hogarth. David Beckett was bewildered. He would have preferred absolute solitude to the presence of Nora Gage, but the fat woman had established herself with the intention of remaining and he was too old and too ineffectual to know how to get rid of her. Often, from a distance, he would stare at the house with a look of indecision, then, with an oath, he would start on a rapid trot for the kitchen. But once in the presence of the woman, his courage forsook him. With one glance from her little crevice eyes, Nora dominated him. However, she had one virtue. Though she ignored the appeal of hanging buttons and refused to patch his clothes, she fed him. For that matter, it was her custom to feed every living thing that came under her notice, the dog, the chickens, even flies. For the flies she had been known to scatter sugar grains, leaning heavily on a substantial elbow to watch the progress of the tiny meal. To old David's food she gave especial attention. His teeth suggested isolated stumps in a clearing; therefore she prepared soft foods for him, porridges and soups, and, while he ate, she was wont to watch him. Her jaws would move in sympathy and in profound contemplation she would even lick her lips.