I even did not mind sleeping under a roof as much as I had before, perhaps because we were so near it; perhaps because the room was so full of all sorts of things, I never got tired of looking at them.  Pretty things she called them, but when I saw more things, things outside in shop windows and the houses I afterwards went into, I knew they were very cheap things and not always pretty.  But she thought they were, and used to talk about them by the hour and tell me stories she had made up about the pictures she had cut out of newspapers.  And I learned something; I could not help it, and even began to think a bit—­something I had never done before.  But when I got on my feet again, and was given the choice of staying there all the time, I did not know at first whether I wanted to or not.  For Mother Duda had been very honest with me, and the minute she found that I could walk again had told me that I would have to have great patience if I lived with her, and endure a very disagreeable sight.  Then she pulled off her shawl and I saw her as she was and almost screamed, she looked so horrid to me, but I didn’t quite, for her eyes wouldn’t let me.  They seemed to ask me not to care, but to love her a little though she was a fright to look at, and I tried but I couldn’t, I could only keep from screaming.

“She had a goitre; that is what she called it, and the great pocket of flesh hanging down on either side of her neck frightened me.  It frightened everybody; she was used to that, but she said she loved me and felt my fear more than she did others.  Could I bear to live with her, knowing what her shawl hid?  If I could she would be good to me, but if I couldn’t she would do what she could to get me honest work in some other place.  I didn’t answer at first, but I did before she had put her shawl on again.  I told her that I would forget everything but her good smile, and stay with her a little while.  I stayed three years, helping her by going about and selling the tatting work she made.

“She could make beautiful patterns and so neat, but she couldn’t sell them, on account of her awful appearance.  So I was very useful to her, and felt I was earning my meat and drink and the kind looks and words which made them taste good.  It taught me a lot, going around.  I saw people and how they lived and what was nice and what wasn’t.  I was only sorry that Mother Duda couldn’t go too.  She loved pretty things so.  But she never went out except at a very early hour in the morning, so early that it was still dark.  It seemed a terrible hour to me, but she always came in with a smile, and when one day I asked her why, she said, because she saw so many other poor creatures out at this same hour, who were worse to look at than she was.  This didn’t seem possible to me, and once I went out with her to see.  But I never went again.  Such faces as we met; such deformity—­men who never showed themselves by day—­women who loved beauty and were hideous.  We saw them on street corners—­coming up cellar steps, slinking in and out of blind alleys—­never where it was light—­and they shrank from each other, but not from the policeman.  They were not afraid of his eye; they were used to him and he to them.  After I had passed a dozen such miserable creatures, I felt myself one of them and never wanted to go out at this hour again.