Slowly Jenny raised her hand and pressed the back of her wrist to her lips, not kissing the wrist, but holding it against her lips so that they were forced hard back upon her teeth.  She drew, presently, a deep breath, releasing her arm again and clasping her hands over her knees as she bent lower, staring at the glowing heart of the fire.  Her lips were closely, seriously, set now; her eyes sorrowful.  Alf and Emmy had receded from her attention as if they had been fantastic shadows.  Pa, sitting holding his exhausted hubble-bubble, was as though he had no existence at all.  Jenny was lost in memory and the painful aspirations of her own heart.

iii

How the moments passed during her reverie she did not know.  For her it seemed that time stood still while she recalled days that were beautified by distance, and imagined days that should be still to come, made to compensate for that long interval of dullness that pressed her each morning into acquiescence.  She bent nearer to the fire, smiling to herself.  The fire showing under the little door of the kitchener was a bright red glowing ash, the redness that came into her imagination when the words “fire” or “heat” were used—­the red heart, burning and consuming itself in its passionate immolation.  She loved the fire.  It was to her the symbol of rapturous surrender, that feminine ideal that lay still deeper than her pride, locked in the most secret chamber of her nature.

And then, as the seconds ticked away, Jenny awoke from her dream and saw that the clock upon the mantelpiece said half-past eight.  Half-past eight was what, in the Blanchard home, was called “time.”  When Pa was recalcitrant Jenny occasionally shouted very loud, with what might have appeared to some people an undesirable knowledge of customs, “Act of Parliament, gentlemen, please”—­which is a phrase sometimes used in clearing a public-house.  To-night there was no need for her to do that.  She had only to look at Pa, to take from his hand the almost empty pipe, to knock out the ashes, and to say: 

“Time, Pa!” Obediently Pa held out his right hand and clutched in the other his sturdy walking-stick.  Together they tottered into the bedroom, stood a moment while Jenny lighted the peep of gas which was Pa’s guardian angel during the night, and then made their way to the bed.  Pa sat upon the bed, like a child.  Jenny took off Pa’s collar and tie, and his coat and waistcoat; she took off his boots and his socks; she laid beside him the extraordinary faded scarlet nightgown in which Pa slept away the darkness.  Then she left him to struggle out of his clothes as well as he could, which Pa did with a skill worthy of his best days.  The cunning which replaces competence had shown him how the braces may be made to do their own work, how the shirt may with one hand be so manipulated as to be drawn swiftly over the head...  Pa was adept at undressing.  He was in bed within five minutes, after a panting, exhausted interval during which he sat in a kind of trance, and was then proudly as usual knocking upon the floor with his walking-stick for Jenny to come and tuck him in for the night.