The women who had all been in such a hurry had waited at the prospect of an altercation, but, seeing it about to blow over, they bethought themselves of their neglected homes and husbands, and passed out behind the still irate Mrs. Warren, who paused long enough in earshot to say, "I hope that spiteful old maid 'll have her hands full." The scene within the room which the women had just left was anything but an inviting one. The place was miserably dirty. Margaret had never been a particularly neat housewife, even in her well days. The old rag carpet which disfigured the floor was worn into shreds and blotched with grease, for the chamber was cooking- and dining- as well as sleeping-room. A stove, red with rust, struggled to send forth some heat. The oily black kerosene lamp showed a sickly yellow flame through the grimy chimney. On a pallet in one corner lay a child sleeping. On the bed, covered with a dingy sheet, lay the stark form out of which the miserable life had so lately passed. The women opened the blinds, blew out the light, and began performing the necessary duties for the dead. "Anyhow, let her body go clean before her Maker," said Miss Hester Prime, severely. "Don't be too hard on the pore soul, Miss Hester," returned Mrs. Davis. "She had a hard time of it. I knowed Margar't when she was n't so low down as in her last days." "She ought n't never to 'a' left her husband." "Oh, ef you 'd 'a' knowed him as I did, Miss Hester, you would n't never say that. He was a brute: sich beatin's as he used to give her when he was in liquor you never heerd tell of." "That was hard, but as long as he was a husband he was a protection to her name." "True enough. Protection is a good dish, but a beatin's a purty bitter sauce to take with it." "I wonder what 's ever become of Brent." "Lord knows. No one 'ain't heerd hide ner hair o' him sence he went away from town. People thought that he was a-hangin' around tryin' to git a chance to kill Mag after she got her divorce from him, but all at once he packed off without sayin' a word to anybody. I guess he's drunk himself to death by this time." When they had finished with Margaret, the women set to work to clean up the house. The city physician who had attended the dead woman in her last hours had reported the case for county burial, and the undertaker was momentarily expected. "We 'll have to git the child up an' git his pallet out of the way, so the floor kin be swept." "A body hates to wake the pore little motherless dear." "Perhaps, after all, the child is better off without her example." "Yes, Miss Hester, perhaps; but a mother, after all, is a mother." "Even sich a one as this?" "Even sich a one as this."