CHAPTER SEVEN

In which my Mother gives my Father a Scriptural Lesson--My Father's
Grief at parting with an old Friend--He expostulates with my Mother
and quits the House.


I Woke early the next morning; for the whole night I had been restless,
and dreaming of the unusual occurrences of the day before. It was just
daylight, and I was recalling what had passed, and wondering what had
become of my father, when I heard a noise in my mother's room. I
listened--the door opened, and she went downstairs.

This surprised me; and being conscious, even at my age, of the
vindictive temper shown by my mother upon every occasion, and anxious to
know where my father was, I could not remain in bed. I put on my
trousers, and crept softly downstairs without my shoes. The door of the
front room was ajar, and I looked in. The light was dimly peering
through the window which pointed to the alley; the table was covered
with the empty pipes, tobacco, and large pools of beer and liquor which
had been spilled on it; the sofa was empty, and my father, who evidently
had become deeply intoxicated the night before, was lying on the sanded
floor with his face downward; my mother, in her short dressing-gown and
flannel petticoat, was standing over him, her teeth set, her fists
clinched, and arms raised, with a dire expression of revenge in her
countenance. I thought at the time that I never saw her look so ugly--I
may say so horrid; even now her expression at that moment is not effaced
from my memory. After a few minutes she knelt down and put her ear close