She shrouded herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam
at the stove, and eventually extracted a frying-pan full of potatoes
that hissed.

She flourished it. "Come teh yer suppers, now," she cried
with sudden exasperation. "Hurry up, now, er I'll help yeh!"

The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clatter they
arranged themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet dangling
high from a precarious infant chair and gorged his small stomach.
Jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity, the grease-enveloped pieces
between his wounded lips. Maggie, with side glances of fear of
interruption, ate like a small pursued tigress.

The mother sat blinking at them. She delivered reproaches,
swallowed potatoes and drank from a yellow-brown bottle.
After a time her mood changed and she wept as she carried
little Tommie into another room and laid him to sleep
with his fists doubled in an old quilt of faded red
and green grandeur. Then she came and moaned by the stove.
She rocked to and fro upon a chair, shedding tears
and crooning miserably to the two children about their
"poor mother" and "yer fader, damn 'is soul."

The little girl plodded between the table and the chair with
a dish-pan on it. She tottered on her small legs beneath burdens
of dishes.

Jimmie sat nursing his various wounds. He cast furtive glances
at his mother. His practised eye perceived her gradually emerge