black hair and beard were filled with flour dust.  Sometimes he was so angry that, although the cat had disappeared, he hurled sticks, bits of broken glass, and even some of the tools of his trade about.  Once he broke a window at the back of Sinning’s Hardware Store.  In the alley the grey cat crouched behind barrels filled with torn paper and broken bottles above which flew a black swarm of flies.  Once when she was alone, and after watching a prolonged and ineffectual outburst on the part of the baker, Elizabeth Willard put her head down on her long white hands and wept.  After that she did not look along the alleyway any more, but tried to forget the contest between the bearded man and the cat.  It seemed like a rehearsal of her own life, terrible in its vividness.

In the evening when the son sat in the room with his mother, the silence made them both feel awkward.  Darkness came on and the evening train came in at the station.  In the street below feet tramped up and down upon a board sidewalk.  In the station yard, after the evening train had gone, there was a heavy silence.  Perhaps Skinner Leason, the express agent, moved a truck the length of the station platform.  Over on Main Street sounded a man’s voice, laughing.  The door of the express office banged.  George Willard arose and crossing the room fumbled for the doorknob.  Sometimes he knocked against a chair, making it scrape along the floor.  By the window sat the sick woman, perfectly still, listless.  Her long hands, white and bloodless, could be seen drooping over the ends of the arms of the chair.  “I think you had better be out among the boys.  You are too much indoors,” she said, striving to relieve the embarrassment of the departure.  “I thought I would take a walk,” replied George Willard, who felt awkward and confused.

One evening in July, when the transient guests who made the New Willard House their temporary home had become scarce, and the hallways, lighted only by kerosene lamps turned low, were plunged in gloom, Elizabeth Willard had an adventure.  She had been ill in bed for several days and her son had not come to visit her.  She was alarmed.  The feeble blaze of life that remained in her body was blown into a flame by her anxiety and she crept out of bed, dressed and hurried along the hallway toward her son’s room, shaking with exaggerated fears.  As she went along she steadied herself with her hand, slipped along the papered walls of the hall and breathed with difficulty.  The air whistled through her teeth.  As she hurried forward she thought how foolish she was.  “He is concerned with boyish affairs,” she told herself.  “Perhaps he has now begun to walk about in the evening with girls.”

Elizabeth Willard had a dread of being seen by guests in the hotel that had once belonged to her father and the ownership of which still stood recorded in her name in the county courthouse.  The hotel was continually losing patronage because of its shabbiness and she thought of herself as also shabby.  Her own room was in an obscure corner and when she felt able to work she voluntarily worked among the beds, preferring the labor that could be done when the guests were abroad seeking trade among the merchants of Winesburg.