A young woman, one of those whose urgent haste trifled not with talk, hurried down the street, stopped before one of the neatest house-fronts, tremblingly thrust a key into the latch, opened and ran breathlessly upstairs.
A grey-haired old woman rose from a wooden chair by the side of a cradle in a clean and modestly furnished room. At the entrance of her daughter-in-law she laid a finger on her lips and looked warningly to the infant. Then remarking an obvious distress, she changed colour.
"What's the matter, Ann?" she whispered, shaking with a sudden alarm. She had to steady herself by the support of the table. "Not--Jim?"
The young woman shook her head, controlled her panting breath.
"Hathaway's!" she brought out. "Closing down!"
The elder stared speechlessly for a moment, then seated herself with that blank mute resignation of the aged poor, long disillusioned of any title to good fortune. The fingers of her unshapely hands twined and untwined themselves tensely in her lap.
"Don't you hear, mother?" said the young woman irritably. "Hathaway's are closing down!"
"Oh, dear!" the old woman raised a face that was strained with imminent tears. "I knew it 'ud never last--I knew it 'ud never last!"
"What we shall do, 'Eaven knows!" said Ann, viciously accenting the sole possible fount of knowledge. "They're all closing down--all of 'em, all round!" Her gesture, as she unpinned her hat and put it, with an excess of energy, on the table, testified to the completeness of the closed horizon. She stood looking at the sleeping child, her brows bent, her mouth troubled. Then suddenly she flung herself on her knees and buried her head in the old woman's lap, shaking with sobs.
"Oh, I did so want to keep it nice for Jim when 'e comes back! I did! I did! All we've got together. And now it'll all go--bit by bit! And I've worked so 'ard--so very 'ard! An' 'e'll never see, never know 'ow nice it was! Oh--mother!" She could utter no more words, only inarticulate sounds.
The old woman soothed her, stroking her hair.
"There, dear! there, dear! Don't take on! It'll all come right. I can go out again an' do a bit of cleanin'. I daresay Mrs. Smith'll take me on again. I ain't done no work for a long while--sitting 'ere eatin' your bread--I've 'ad a nice rest, I 'ave--I'm quite strong again now. We'll both get somethin', you see, dear!"