Tommy lay at the foot of the bed looking at this room, which was his home now, and trying to think of the other one, and by and by the fire helped him by falling to ashes, when darkness came in, and packing the furniture in grotesque cloths, removed it piece by piece, all but the clock.  Then the room took a new shape.  The fireplace was over there instead of here, the torn yellow blind gave way to one made of spars of green wood, that were bunched up at one side, like a lady out for a walk.  On a round table there was a beautiful blue cloth, with very few gravy marks, and here a man ate beef when a woman and a boy ate bread, and near the fire was the man’s big soft chair, out of which you could pull hairs, just as if it were Shovel’s sister.

Of this man who was his father he could get no hold.  He could feel his presence, but never see him.  Yet he had a face.  It sometimes pressed Tommy’s face against it in order to hurt him, which it could do, being all short needles at the chin.

Once in those days Tommy and his mother ran away and hid from some one.  He did not know from whom nor for how long, though it was but for a week, and it left only two impressions on his mind, the one that he often asked, “Is this starving now, mother?” the other that before turning a corner she always peered round it fearfully.  Then they went back again to the man and he laughed when he saw them, but did not take his feet off the mantelpiece.  There came a time when the man was always in bed, but still Tommy could not see his face.  What he did see was the man’s clothes lying on the large chair just as he had placed them there when he undressed for the last time.  The black coat and worsted waistcoat which he could take off together were on the seat, and the light trousers hung over the side, the legs on the hearthrug, with the red socks still sticking in them:  a man without a body.

But the boy had one vivid recollection of how his mother received the news of his father’s death.  An old man with a white beard and gentle ways, who often came to give the invalid physic, was standing at the bedside, and Tommy and his mother were sitting on the fender.  The old man came to her and said, “It is all over,” and put her softly into the big chair.  She covered her face with her hands, and he must have thought she was crying, for he tried to comfort her.  But as soon as he was gone she rose, with such a queer face, and went on tiptoe to the bed, and looked intently at her husband, and then she clapped her hands joyously three times.

At last Tommy fell asleep with his mouth open, which is the most important thing that has been told of him as yet, and while he slept day came and restored the furniture that night had stolen.  But when the boy woke he did not even notice the change; his brain traversed the hours it had lost since he lay down as quickly as you may put on a stopped clock, and with his first tick he was thinking of nothing