“Oh, rotten!  I woke up when the baby did.”

“But, Wallie—­that was seven o’clock!  You’ve been asleep since.”

“Just dozing.  I heard you come in!”

“Well, I think I’ll move her clothes out of that room.  Aren’t your eggs good?”

“Nope.  They taste like storage.  I should think we could get good eggs now!”

“They ought to be good!”

“You ought to get a telephone in here,” he might return sourly.  “Then you could deal with some decent place!  I hate the way women pinch and squeeze to save five cents; there’s nothing in it!”

Silence.  Martie’s face flushed, her fingers flew.

“What are you doing to-day?” she might ask, after a while.

“Oh, I’ll go down town, I guess.  Never can tell when something’ll break.  Bates told me that Foster was anxious to see me.  He says they’re having a deuce of a time getting people for their plays.  Bates says to stick ’em for a couple of hundred a week.”

Martie placed small hope in such a hint, but she was glad he could.  When he had sauntered away, she would go on patiently, mixing the baby’s bottles, picking toys from the floor, tying and re-tying Ted’s shoe-laces.  This was a woman’s life.  Martha Bannister was not a martyr; nobody in the city could stop to help or pity her.

The hot summer shut down upon them, and the baby drooped, even though Martie was careful to wheel her out into the shade by the river every day.  She herself drooped, staring at life helplessly, hopelessly.  In March there would be a third child.

After a restless night, the sun woke her, morning after morning, glaring into her room at six.  Wearily, languidly, she dressed the twisting and leaping Teddy, fastened little Margar, with her string of spools and her shabby double-gown, in the high-chair.  The kitchen smelled of coffee, of grease; the whole neighbourhood smelled in the merciless heat of the summer day.  Had that meat spoiled; was the cream just a little turned?

Ted, always absorbed in wheels, pulleys, and nails, would be in an interrogative mood.

“Mother, could a giant step across the East River?”

“What was it, dear?—­the water was running; Mother didn’t hear you.”

“Could a giant step across a river?”

“Why, I suppose he could.  Don’t touch that, Ted.”

“Could he step across the whole world?”

“I don’t know.  Here’s your porridge, dear.  Listen—–­”

For Wallace was shouting.  Martie would go to the bedroom door, to interrogate the tousle-headed, heaving form under the bedclothes.

“Say, Martie, isn’t there an awful lot of noise out there?”

Martie would stand silent for a moment.

“You can’t blame the children for chattering, Wallace.”

“Well, you tell Ted he’ll catch it, if I hear any more of it!”

She would go lifelessly back to the kitchen, to sip a cup of scalding black coffee.  Margar went into her basket for her breakfast, banging the empty bottle rapturously against the wicker sides as a finale.