But how _funny_ Mattie was about dressing herself! Was there anybody who had less faculty for it? A flicker of amusement--the first she had felt all day--drew her lips into a good-natured smile at the recollection of that awful hat with the pink feather which Mattie had wanted to buy. What a figure of fun she had looked in it! And she knew it! And yet was hypnotized by the dowdy thing. All she had needed was the hint to take the small, dark-blue one that suited her perfectly. How queer she couldn’t think of it herself. She loved to go shopping with Mattie--with old Mrs. Anderson, with any of the ladies in the Guild who so often asked her advice. It was a real pleasure to help them select the right things. But--her softened face tightened and set--how horribly naughty Stephen was when you tried to take him into shops. Such disgraceful scenes as she had had with him when he got tired and impatient. The clock behind her struck half-past nine, and she became aware of its ticking once more, its insistent whisper: “_So much to do! So much to do! So much to do!_” She was very tired and found she had relaxed wearily into her chair. But she got up with a brisk energetic motion like a prize-fighter coming out of his corner. She detested people who moved languidly and dragged themselves around. She went into the kitchen and put the oatmeal into the fireless cooker, and after this waited, polishing absent-mindedly the nickel towel-bar of the shining stove, till she heard Lester go out of the bathroom. Then she went swiftly up the stairs, locked the bathroom door behind her, and began to unwind the bandages from around her upper arm. When it finally came off she inspected the raw patch on her arm. It was crusted over in places, with thick, yellowish-white pus oozing from the pustules. It was spreading. It was worse. It would never be any better. It was like everything else. She spread a salve on it with practised fingers, wound a fresh bandage about her arm, fastened it firmly and then washed her hands over and over, scrubbing them mercilessly with a stiff brush till they were raw. She always felt unclean to her bones after she had seen one of those frequently recurring eczema eruptions on her skin. She never spoke of them unless some one asked her a question about her health. She felt disgraced by their loathsomeness, although no one but she and the doctor ever saw them. She often called it to herself, “the last straw.” Her nightgown hung on the bathroom door. They usually dressed and undressed here not to disturb Stephen who still slept in their bedroom, because there was no other corner in the little house for him. And now they would _never_ be able to move to a larger house where they could live decently and have a room apiece, to a better part of town where the children would have decent playmates. _Never_ anything but this....