Since Paulina Maria could not afford to have a coat of new paint on her house, she had a bitter ambition, from motives of tidiness and pride, to at least remove all traces of the old.  She felt that the chief sting of present deprivation lay in the evidence of its contrast with former plenty.  She hated the image in her memory of her cottage glistening with the white gloss of paint, and would have weakened it if she could.  Paulina Maria accordingly, standing on a kitchen-chair, had scrubbed with soap and sand the old paint-streaks as high as her long arms would reach, and had, at times, when his rheumatism would permit, set her tall husband to the task.  The paint, which was difficult to remove by any but its natural effacers—­the long courses of nature—­was one of those minor material antagonisms of life which keep the spirit whetted for harder ones.

Paulina Maria Judd had many such; when the pricks of fate were too firm set against her struggling feet she saved herself from the despair of utter futility by taking soap and water and sand, and going forth to attack the paint on her house walls, and also the front door-stone worn in frequent hollows for the collection of dirt and dust.

This evening, when Jerome drew near, he saw a long rise of back over the door-step, and a swiftly plying shoulder and arm.  Paulina Maria looked up without ceasing when Jerome stood beside her.

“You’re working late,” he said, with an attempt at pleasantry.

“I have to do my cleanin’ late or not at all,” replied Paulina Maria, in her cold, calm voice.  She rubbed more soap on her cloth.

“Uncle Adoniram at home?” Jerome had always called Adoniram “Uncle,” though he was his father’s cousin.

“Yes.”

“I want to see him a minute about something.”

“You’ll have to go round to the back door.  I can’t have more dirt tracked into this while it’s wet.”

Jerome went around the house to the back door.  As he passed the lighted sitting-room windows he saw a monstrous shadow with steadily moving hands on the curtain.  He fumbled his way through the lighted room, in which sat Adoniram Judd closing shoes and his son Henry knitting.  When the door opened Henry, whose shadow Jerome had seen on the window-pane, looked up with the vacant peering of the blind, but his fingers never ceased twirling the knitting-needles.

“How are you?” said Jerome.

Adoniram returned his salutation without rising, and bade him take a chair.  Henry spoke not at all, and bent his dim eyes again over his knitting without a smile.  Henry Judd had the lank height of his father, and his blunt elongation of face and features, informed by his mother’s spirit.  The result in his expression was an absolute ferocity instead of severity of gloom, a fury of resentment against his fate, instead of that bitter leaning towards it which is the acme of defiance.

Henry Judd bent his heavy, pale brows over the miserable feminine work to which he was forced.  His long hands were white as a girl’s, and revealed their articulation as they moved; his face, transparently pale, showed a soft furze of young beard on cheek and chin.