ODOUR OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS

Her mother gave a short laugh.

"No," she said, "not to me. It was chrysanthemums
when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were
born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk,
he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his coat. When I smell
them I could always think of that, me dragging at him to get
his coat off."

She looked at the children. Their eyes and their parted
lips were piteous. The mother sat rocking in silence for
some time. Then she looked at the clock.

"Twenty minutes to six !" In a tone of fine bitter care-
lessness she continued : "Eh, he'll not come now till they bring
him. There he'll stick! He needn't come rolling in here in
his pit-dirt, for I won't wash him. He can lie on the floor ----
Eh, what a fool I've been, what a fool! And this is what I
came here for, to this dirty hole, rats and all, for him to slink
past his very door. Twice last week -- he's begun now ---- "

She silenced herself, and rose to clear the table.

While for an hour or more the children played, subduedly
intent, fertile of imagination, united in fear of the mother's
wrath, and in dread of their father's homecoming, Mrs. Bates
sat in her rocking-chair making a "singlet"* of thick cream-
colourd flannel, which gave a dull wounded sound as she tore
off the grey edge. She worked at her sewing with energy,
listening to the children, and her Anger wearied Itself, lay
down to rest, opening Its eyes from time to time and steadily
watching, Its ears raised to listen. Sometimes even her Anger
quailed and shrank, and the mother suspended her sewing,
tracing the footsteps that thudded along the sleepers outside;
she would lift her head sharply to bid the children "hush," but
she recovered herself in time, and the footsteps went past the
gate, and the children were not flung out of their play-world.

But at last Annie sighed, and gave in. She glanced at her
waggon of slippers, and loathed the game. She turned plaintively
to her mother.

"Mother !"--but she was inarticulate.

John crept out like a frog from under the sofa. His mother
glanced up.

"Yes," she said," just look at those shirt-sleeves !"

The boy held them out to survey them, saying nothing.
Then somebody called in a hoarse voice away down the line,
and suspense bristled in the room, till two people had gone by
outside, talking.

"It is time for bed," said the mother.

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