of rag carpet reaching from the table to a corner of the stove. There
was a red cloth with knotted fringe on the table, and a bed in another
corner had a red-and-white patchwork spread and puffy white pillows.
There had been a woman--but Charming Billy shut his eyes, mentally, to
the woman, because he was not accustomed to them and he was not at
all sure that he wanted to be accustomed; they did not fit in with the
life he lived. He felt dimly that, in a way, they were like the
heaven his mother had taught him--altogether perfect and altogether
unattainable and not to be thought of with any degree of familiarity.
So his memory of the woman was indistinct, as of something which did
not properly belong to the picture. He clung instead to the memory of
the warm stove, and the strip of carpet, and the table with the red
cloth, and to the puffy, white pillows on the bed.

The wind mourned again insistently at the corner. Billy lifted
his head and looked once more around the cabin. The reality was
depressing--doubly depressing in contrast to the memory of that other
room. A stove stood in the southwest corner, but it was not black
and shining; it was rust-red and ash-littered, and the ashes had
overflowed the hearth and spilled to the unswept floor. A dented
lard-pail without a handle did meagre duty as a teakettle, and
balanced upon a corner of the stove was a dirty frying pan. The fire
had gone dead and the room was chill with the rising of the wind.
The table was filled with empty cans and tin plates and cracked,
oven-stained bowls and iron-handled knives and forks, and the bunk in
the corner was a tumble of gray blankets and unpleasant, red-flowered
comforts--corner-wads, Charming Billy was used to calling them--and
for pillows there were two square, calico-covered cushions,
depressingly ugly in pattern and not over-clean.