The living-room in the Twillys’ house was so damp that thick, soppy moss grew all over the walls.  It dripped on the picture of Grandfather Twilly that hung over the melodeon, making streaks down the dirty glass like sweat on the old man’s face.  It was a mean face.  Grandfather Twilly had been a mean man and bad little spots of soup on the lapel of his coat.  All his children were mean and had soup spots on their clothes.

Grandma Twilly sat in the rocker over by the window, and as she rocked the chair snapped.  It sounded like Grandma Twilly’s knees snapping as they did whenever she stooped over to pull the wings off a fly.  She was a mean old thing.  Her knuckles were grimy and she chewed crumbs that she found in the bottom of her reticule.  You would have hated her.  She hated herself.  But most of all she hated Grandfather Twilly.

“I certainly hope you’re frying good,” she muttered as she looked up at his picture.

“Hasn’t the undertaker come yet, Ma?” asked young Mrs. Wilbur Twilly petulantly.  She was boiling water on the oil-heater and every now and again would spill a little of the steaming liquid on the baby who was playing on the floor.  She hated the baby because it looked like her father.  The hot water raised little white blisters on the baby’s red neck and Mabel Twilly felt short, sharp twinges of pleasure at the sight.  It was the only pleasure she had had for four months.

“Why don’t you kill yourself, Ma?” she continued.  “You’re only in the way here and you know it.  It’s just because you’re a mean old woman and want to make trouble for us that you hang on.”

Grandma Twilly shot a dirty look at her daughter-in-law.  She had always hated her.  Stringy hair, Mabel had.  Dank, stringy hair.  Grandma Twilly thought how it would look hanging at an Indian’s belt.  But all that she did was to place her tongue against her two front teeth and make a noise like the bath-room faucet.

Wilbur Twilly was reading the paper by the oil lamp.  Wilbur had watery blue eyes and cigar ashes all over his knees.  The third and fourth buttons of his vest were undone.  It was too hideous.

He was conscious of his family seated in chairs about him.  His mother, chewing crumbs.  His wife Mabel, with her stringy hair, reading.  His sister Bernice, with projecting front teeth, who sat thinking of the man who came every day to take away the waste paper.  Bernice was wondering how long it would be before her family would discover that she had been married to this man for three years.

How Wilbur hated them all.  It didn’t seem as if he could stand it any longer.  He wanted to scream and stick pins into every one of them and then rush out and see the girl who worked in his office snapping rubber-bands all day.  He hated her too, but she wore side-combs.

PART 2

The street was covered with slimy mud.  It oozed out from under Bernice’s rubbers in unpleasant bubbles until it seemed to her as if she must kill herself.  Hot air coming out from a steam laundry.  Hot, stifling air.  Bernice didn’t work in the laundry but she wished that she did so that the hot air would kill her.  She wanted to be stifled.  She needed torture to be happy.  She also needed a good swift clout on the side of the face.