“Oh, she stood up for you. Not because she’d read the poetry or cared a hoot what you’d said in it. Just because it was something to fight about with Pa. They were going it hot and heavy when I decided to sit out on the steps and warn you. I’ve got to go back before they miss me, so, listen! You hang around outside, Natie, and if Ma talks him out of it or he gets winded and goes to bed, I’ll put a lamp in my upstairs window and you’ll know it’s a sign to sneak in.” Nathan remained seated on the fence. Once or twice he cast glances toward his home, fearing to go in, fearing to remain out later. He looked down at his shoes, worn, sloppy and unshined. He felt supinely small in the ludicrous suit he wore, an old one of his father’s. His hands were soiled. His finger nails were broken. He needed a bath, in fact, it seemed as though he always needed a bath. He felt grimy and seamy and prematurely old. He had been that evening in the Seaver home. Fred Seaver’s father ran a meat and grocery store in East Main Street. Fred was experimenting with electricity and Nat had gone over to inspect his apparatus. But it had not been the apparatus which had most interested Nathan. It had been the Seaver home. The Seaver home had hardwood floors and all the rooms were lighted by electric chandeliers. The dining room had a cozy “dome” above the table, and silver sparkled amid cut glass on the buffet. The Seaver parlor wasn’t “saved for company.” It was open all the time and in one corner an open fire burned cheerily. The Seavers called it the “living room.” There were bookshelves between the windows and a soft-shaded reading lamp on the center table. In the Forge home, Johnathan “roared like a bull” if more than one gas light was burned at once. Out from the west wall of the Forge kitchen stuck a twelve-inch gas bracket with a single Welsbach burner. It was a white, cheerless light which burned unevenly. Beneath it each night Johnathan tipped back his plain wooden chair and read his _Telegraph_. If the rest of the family cared to read, they “strained their eyes” or waited until the father had finished. Nathan could not help comparing the two lamps,—the difference in homes which they represented. The Seaver home was inviting, restful. In the Forge home, clothes were always piled on chairs or tables. More ironed clothes were usually strung on a wire from corner to corner, making the kitchen atmosphere stuffy. The sink was always filled with greasy dishes. The faucet dripped. There were crumbs on the red tablecloth and sugar grains on the worn linoleum. Nathan had compared the two and wished, poor boy, that he might know such a home as Fred Seaver’s. He thought of it now as he sat out in the chill September night, afraid to enter a house where a father waited to flog him.