"Time, Pa!" Obediently Pa held out his right hand and clutched in the
other his sturdy walking-stick. Together they tottered into the bedroom,
stood a moment while Jenny lighted the peep of gas which was Pa's
guardian angel during the night, and then made their way to the bed. Pa
sat upon the bed, like a child. Jenny took off Pa's collar and tie, and
his coat and waistcoat; she took off his boots and his socks; she laid
beside him the extraordinary faded scarlet nightgown in which Pa slept
away the darkness. Then she left him to struggle out of his clothes as
well as he could, which Pa did with a skill worthy of his best days. The
cunning which replaces competence had shown him how the braces may be
made to do their own work, how the shirt may with one hand be so
manipulated as to be drawn swiftly over the head... Pa was adept at
undressing. He was in bed within five minutes, after a panting,
exhausted interval during which he sat in a kind of trance, and was then
proudly as usual knocking upon the floor with his walking-stick for
Jenny to come and tuck him in for the night.

Jenny came, gave him a big kiss, and went back to the kitchen, where she
resumed work upon her hat. It had lost its interest for her. She
stitched quickly and roughly, not as one interested in needlework or
careful for its own sake of the regularity of the stitch. Ordinarily she
was accurate: to-night her attention was elsewhere. It had come back to
the rows, because there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes
it ever so much more important than it really is. Loneliness with happy
thoughts is perhaps an ideal state; but no torment could be greater than
loneliness with thoughts that wound. Jenny's thoughts wounded her. The
mood of complacency was gone: that of shame and discontent was upon her.
Distress was uppermost in her mind--not the petulant wriggling of a
spoilt child, but the sober consciousness of pain in herself and in