“Sure you have,” he agreed affably.  “But playing around with Louis Akers is like playing with a hand-grenade, Edith.”  She said nothing.  “I’d cut him out, little girl.  He’s poor stuff.  Mind, I’m not saying he’s a fool, but he’s a bad actor.  Now if I was a pretty girl, and there was a nice fellow around like this Cameron, I’d be likely to think he was all right.  He’s got brains.”  Mr. Hendricks had a great admiration for brains.

“I’m sick of men.”

He turned at her tone and eyed her sharply.

“Well, don’t judge them all by Akers.  This is my corner.  Good-night.  Not afraid to go on by yourself, are you?”

“If I ever was I’ve had a good many chances to get over it.”

He turned the corner, but stopped and called after her.

“Tell Dan I’ll be in to see him soon, Edith.  Haven’t seen him since he came back from France.”

“All right.”

She went on, her steps lagging.  She hated going home.  When she reached the little house she did not go in at once.  The March night was not cold, and she sat the step, hoping to see her mother’s light go out in the second-story front windows.  But it continued to burn steadily, and at last, with a gesture of despair, she rose and unlocked the door.

Almost at once she heard footsteps above, and a peevish voice.

“That you, Edie?”

“Yes.”

“D’you mind bringing up the chloroform liniment and rubbing my back?”

“I’ll bring it, mother.”

She found it on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen.  She could hear the faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered floor, and then silence.  She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her, and something crunched under her foot.  She felt like screaming.  That new clerk at the store was always talking about homes.  What did he know of squalid city houses, with their insects and rats, their damp, moldy cellars, their hateful plumbing?  A thought struck her.  She lighted the gas and stared around.  It was as she had expected.  The dishes had not been washed.  They were piled in the sink, and a soiled dish-towel had been thrown over them.

She lowered the gas and went upstairs.  The hardness had, somehow, gone out of her when she thought of Willy Cameron.

“Back bad again, is it?” she asked.

“It’s always bad.  But I’ve got a pain in my left shoulder and down my arm that’s driving me crazy.  I couldn’t wash the dishes.”

“Never mind the dishes.  I’m not tired.  Now crawl into bed and let me rub you.”

Mrs. Boyd complied.  She was a small, thin woman in her early fifties, who had set out to conquer life and had been conquered by it.  The hopeless drab of her days stretched behind her, broken only by the incident of her widowhood, and stretched ahead hopelessly.  She had accepted Dan’s going to France resignedly, with neither protest nor undue anxiety.  She had never been very close to Dan, although she loved him more than she did Edith.  She was the sort of woman who has no fundamental knowledge of men.  They had to be fed and mended for, and they had strange physical wants that made a great deal of trouble in the world.  But mostly they ate and slept and went to work in the morning, and came home at night smelling of sweat and beer.