“H’m!  Well, you tell him to charge it.”  Malcolm sat down by the fireplace.  There was no fire, the evening was not cold enough for one.  He began to unlace his shoes.  “Brother home?” he asked, glancing from Lydia, who was filling the water glasses from a glazed china pitcher, to Martie, who was dragging and pushing six chairs into place.

“Not yet—­no, sir!” the two girls said together unhesitatingly.  Leonard could take care of himself under his father’s displeasure.  Martie added solicitously, “Would you like your slippers, Pa?  I know where they are; by the chestard.”

He did not immediately answer, being indeed in no mood for a civil response, and yet finding no welcome cause for grievance.  He sat, a lean, red-faced man, with a drooping black moustache, a high-bridged nose, and grizzled hair, looking moodily about him.

“Get them—­get them; don’t stand staring there, Martie!” he burst out suddenly.  Martie caught up his shoes and dashed upstairs.

She went into the large, vault-like apartment that had been her mother’s bedroom for nearly thirty years.  To a young and ardent nature, facing the great question of loving and mating, any place less indicative of the warmth and companionship of marriage could hardly have been imagined.  The bedstead of heavy redwood was wide, flat, and hard.  It was flanked by a marble-topped table and a chair.  There were two large, curtained bay windows in this room, too, a faded carpet, a wash-stand with two pallid towels on the rack, several other stiff-backed chairs, and a large bureau with a square mirror and a brown marble slab.  Over this slab a thin strip of fringed scarf was laid, and on the scarf stood a brown satin box, with the word “Gloves” painted over the yellow roses that ornamented its cover.

This was all.  Mrs. Monroe kept in the box an odd castor, an empty cologne bottle, a new corset string, five coat buttons, a rusty pair of scissors, an old jet bar-brooch whose pin was gone, and various other small odds and ends.  She had but one pair of gloves, of black shiny kid, somewhat whitened at the finger-tips, and worn only to church or to funerals.  They were a sort of institution, “my gloves,” and were kept in the bureau drawer.  They distinguished her state from that of Belle, the maid, who had no gloves at all.

Opposite the bureau, but because of the enormous size of the room, some twenty-five feet away, was the “chestard” the high “chest of drawers” that had won its name from the children’s contracted pronunciation.  This bleak article of furniture contained the smaller pieces of Malcolm Monroe’s wardrobe, which matched in plainness and ugliness that of his wife.  Stiff white collars caught and rasped when the shallow upper drawer was opened; the middle drawers were filled with brownish gray flannels, and shirts stiff-bosomed and limp of sleeves.  But if a curious Martie, making the bed, or putting away the “wash,” ever cautiously tugged out the lowest drawer, she found it so loaded with papers, old account books, and bundles of letters as to awe her young soul.  These meant nothing to Martie, and the drawer was heavy to open noiselessly and awkward to close in haste, yet at intervals now and then she liked to peep at its mysterious contents.