D. H. Lawrence's 'Odour of Chrysanthemums'

the inside of which bits of dried potato were sticking. Then,
for the first time, fear arrived in the room, and stood foremost.
The expression of her face changed, and she sat thinking acutely.

The clock struck eight and she rose suddenly, dropping her
sewing on her chair. She went to the stairfoot door, opened it,
and stood listening. The children were evidently asleep.
Very softly the mother shut the door, and, without hesitating,
fetched an iron screen from the pantry, and hung it before the
fire, turned back the rug, and put on her hat and a large grey
cloth shawl. Then she went out, locking the door behind her.

Something scuffled down the yard as she went out, and she
started, though she knew it was only the rats, with which the
place was overrun. The night was very dark. In the great bay
of railway-lines where the black trucks rose up obscurely there
was no trace of light, only away back she could see a few yellow
lamps at the pit-top, and the red smear of the burning pit-bank
on the night. She could see the street lamps threading down
hill beyond the railway and the field, shining large where the
road crossed the lines, and tangling like fireflies in a blur of light
where she looked straight down into Old Brinsley . She hurried
along the edge of the track, stepping carefully over the levers
of the points, and, crossing the converging lines, came to the
stile by the great white gates near the weighing machine,
whence she emerged on the road. Then the fear which had
led her by the hand unhesitating loosed its hold, and shrank back.
People were walking up to New Brinsley ; she saw the light in
the window of his mother's house below the road by the crossing;
twenty yards further on were the great windows of the "Prince

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