family going on as usual at home; the greengrocer calling. She knew that everybody was alone and that all the fuss and noise people made all day was a pretence.... What to _do_? To be walking about with a quiet face meeting death. Nothing could be so alone as that. The pain, and struggle, and darkness.... That was what the old woman feared. She did not think about death. She was afraid and sullen all the time. Stunned, sitting there with her cold common daughter. She had been common herself as a girl, but more noisy, and she had married and never thought about dying, and now she was dying and hating her cold daughter. The daughter, sitting there with her stiff slatey-blue coat and skirt, her indistinct hat tied with a thin harsh veil to her small flat head--what a home with her in it all the time. She would never laugh. Her poor-looking cheeks were yellowish, her fringe dry, without gloss. She would move her mouth when she spoke, sideways with a snarling curl of one-half of the upper lip and have that resentful way of speaking that all North Londoners have, and the maddening North London accent. The old woman’s voice would be deep and hollow.... The girl moving heavily about the house wearing boots and stiff dresses and stiff stays showing their outline through her clothes. They would be bitter to their servant and would not trust her. What was the good of their being alive ... a house and a water system and drains and cooking, and they would take all these things for granted and grumble and snarl ... the gas meter man would call there. Did men like that resent calling at houses like that? No. They’d just say, “The ole party she sez to me.” How good they were, these men. Good and kind and cheerful. Someone ought to prevent the extravagance of keeping whole houses and fires going for women like that. They ought to be in an institution. But they never thought about that. They were satisfied with themselves. They were self-satisfied because they did not know what they were like.... _Why_ should you have a house, and tradesmen calling?