Rebellion once more reddened her heart--rebellion, as she thought, against her own particular condition, but the old rebellion, actually, that burns, at one time or another, in every heart: the revolt of the individual, more or less conscious of its individuality, against the conditions that are combined to crush it. She poured the water from the heavy iron tea-kettle into the tin dishpan with a quick anger that was not eased when two or three of the scalding drops leaped back against her bared, round arms. She flung the home-boiled soap after the water, and she clattered the dishes as loudly as she dared. Through the window--her soul hot with the sense of the injustice done her--she could see the happy lights in Etta's house, and, her hands deep in the greasy fluid, it came to her suddenly that she had been a fool to neglect--to repudiate--to-day what might have been the golden chance to such an estate as her sister's. She had heard the protesting Sarah sent to bed; had heard her mother return to the parlor with the sewing-basket, and, finally, as she was putting away the last of the dishes in the china-closet in the dining-room, she caught the voices of both of her parents. Dimly glimpsed from the small apartment beyond, she knew the scene well enough to reconstruct it perfectly. The crowded little parlor was like a hundred others in the immediate neighborhood, a mathematical result of the community of which it was a part. There were the two front windows with the horse-hair chairs before each and, between them, the marble-top table bearing the family Bible. There was the gilt mirror over the gorgeously lambrequined mantelpiece, which was littered with a brass clock, dried-grass-bearing yellow vases, stiff photographs of dead or married younger Denbighs, and "memorial cards" with illegible gilt lettering upon a ground of black. Close by the cabinet-organ on one side and the green sofa on the other--the sofa adorned with a lace "tidy" that would never remain neatly in its place--her father and mother sat, separated by the purple-covered center-table, their gaze interrupted by the tall glass case that contained the bunch of white _immortelles_ from the grave of their eldest son. Mrs. Denbigh was finishing, it seemed, the narrative of the town's latest scandal. "I never knowed Mrs. Drumbaugh was that soft-hearted," the mother was saying. "Nobody in town was fooled over the reason for why her Jennie went away, an' yet here the girl comes back a'ready, and Mrs. Drumbaugh, church-member though she is, takes her into the house ag'in--her an' her baby along with her."