Scotland -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
More than anything else she hated people to see her when she had been
crying, yet she was sorry that the little house was dark. And though she
had seen, as she came in through the square, that there were no lights
in any window, and though the sitting-room door was ajar, and showed a
cold hearth and furniture looking huddled and low-spirited as furniture
does when dusk comes and there is no company, she stood in the hall and
called, "Mother! Mother!" She more than half remembered as she called
that her mother had that morning said something about spending the
afternoon with an old friend at Trinity. But she cried out again,
"Mother! Mother!" and lest the cry should sound piteous sent it out
angrily. There was no answer but the complaining rattle of a window at
the top of the house, which, like all dwellings of the very poor, was
perpetually ailing in its fitments; and, letting her wet things fall to
her feet, she moved desolately into the kitchen. The gleam of the
caddies along the mantelpiece, the handles that protruded like stiff
tails over the saucepan-shelf above the sink, struck her as looking
queer and amusing in this twilight, and then made her remember that she
had had no lunch and was now very hungry, so she briskly set a light to
the gas-ring and put on the kettle. She had the luck to find in the
breadpan a loaf far newer than it was their thrifty habit to eat, and
carried it back to the table, finding just such delicious pleasure in
digging her fingers into its sides as she found in standing on her
heels on new asphalt; but turned her head sharply on an invisible
derider.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account