breakfast, or sitting beside her while she ate her dinner, but the
intervening spaces, when "Ma" or Cora served, were dim, indistinct
adumbrations of no more substantial quality than the vagrant dreams that
ranged mistily across her relaxed brain.

The thin walls of the cheaply-built flat did not protect her from the
noise of the children's prattling tongues and boisterous laughter, but
the walls of her consciousness closed her about, as in a muffled
security, and she slept on and on, until the exhausted body was
reinforced, the overtaxed nerves infused with new strength.

Then, one evening, when the room in which she lay was dusky with
twilight shadows, she realized that she was awake, that she was alive.
She had gradually groped her way through the dim stretches lying between
the region of visions and that of the actual, but the step into a full
sense of reality was abrupt. She heard the sound of children's voices in
the next room. So clear they were, she could distinguish every syllable.

"Say, now, listen, mother! What do you do when you go out working every
day?" It was Cora speaking.

"I work."

"Pooh, you know what I mean. What kinder work do you do?"

For a moment there was no answer, then Claire recognized Martha's voice,
with what was, undeniably, a chuckle tucked away in its mellow depths,
where no mere, literal child would be apt to discern it.

"Stenography an' typewritin'!"