Her
father was knocking the ashes from his pipe. A similar tapping
sounded inside at the fireplace. The old woman had gone and Bub
was in bed, and she had heard neither move. The old man rose with
a yawn.
"Time to lay down, June."
The girl rose. They all slept in one room. She did not dare to put
on her night-gown--her mother would see it in the morning. So she
slipped off her dress, as she had done all her life, and crawled
into bed with Bub, who lay in the middle of it and who grunted
peevishly when she pushed him with some difficulty over to his
side. There were no sheets--not even one--and the coarse blankets,
which had a close acrid odour that she had never noticed before,
seemed almost to scratch her flesh. She had hardly been to bed
that early since she had left home, and she lay sleepless,
watching the firelight play hide and seek with the shadows among
the aged, smoky rafters and flicker over the strings of dried
things that hung from the ceiling. In the other corner her father
and stepmother snored heartily, and Bub, beside her, was in a
nerveless slumber that would not come to her that night-tired and
aching as she was.
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