Rose-Marie, whose eyes had now become accustomed to the dim light, stepped past the boy and into the room.  Her hand, in passing, touched his arm lightly, for she knew that he was labouring under intense excitement.  She stepped into the room, on mousy-quiet feet—­and then, with a quick gasp, drew back again.

Never, in her wildest dreams of poverty, had Rose-Marie supposed that squalor, such as she saw in the Volsky home, could exist.  Never had she supposed that a family could live in such cramped, airless quarters.  Never had she thought that filth, such as she saw in the room, was possible.  It all seemed, somehow, an unbelievably bad dream—­a dream in which she was appearing, with startling realism.  Her comfortable picture of a home was vanishing—­vanishing as suddenly and completely as a soap bubble vanishes, if pricked by a pin.

“Why—­why, Bennie!” she began.  But the child was not listening.  He had darted from her side and was dragging forward, by one listless, work-coarsened hand, a pallid, drooping woman.

“Dis is my ma,” he told Rose-Marie.  “She didn’t know yer was comin’.  I didn’t tell her!”

It seemed to Rose-Marie that there was a scared sort of appeal in the woman’s eyes as they travelled, slowly, over her face.  But there was not even appeal in the tone of her voice—­it was all a drab, colourless monotone.

“Whatcha come here fer?” she questioned.  “Pa, he’s home.  If he should ter wake up—­” She left the sentence unfinished.

Almost instinctively the eyes of Rose-Marie travelled past the figure of Mrs. Volsky.  There was nothing in that figure to hold her gaze—­it was so vague, so like a shadow of something that had been.  She saw the few broken chairs, the half-filled wash tub, the dish-pan with its freight of soiled cups and plates.  She saw the gas stove, with its battered coffee-pot, and a mattress or two piled high with dingy bedding.  And, in one corner, she saw—­with a new sense of horror—­the reclining figure of Pa.

Pa was sleeping.  Sleeping heavily, with his mouth open and his tousled head slipping to one side.  One great hairy hand was clenched about an empty bottle—­one huge foot, stockingless and half out of its shoe, was dragging limply off the heap of blankets that was his bed.  A stubble of beard made his already dark face even more sinister, his tousled hair looked as if it had never known the refining influences of a comb or brush.  As Rose-Marie stared at him, half fascinated, he turned—­with a spasmodic, drunken movement—­and flung one heavy arm above his head.

The room was not a large one.  But, at that moment, it seemed appallingly spacious to Rose-Marie.  She turned, almost with a feeling of affection, toward Bennie.  At least she had seen him before.  And, as if he interpreted her feeling, Bennie spoke.

“We got two other rooms,” he told her, “one that Ella an’ Lily sleep in, an’ one that Jim pays fer, his own self.  Ma an’ Pa an’ me—­we sleep here!  Say, don’t you be too scared o’ Pa—­he’ll stay asleep fer a long time, now.  He won’t wake up unless he’s shook.  Will he, Ma?”