It is the early breakfast hour at a small frame house, situated about
a mile from the staid but thriving village of Pushton. But the
indications around the house do not denote thrift. Quite the reverse.
As the neighbors expressed it, "there was a screw loose with Lacey,"
the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A
general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most
casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the
shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from
lack of paint. But as you entered and passed from the province of the
master to that of the mistress a new element was apparent, struggling
with, but unable to overcome, the predominant tendency to unthrift and
seediness. But everything that Mrs. Lacey controlled was as neat as
the poor overworked woman could keep it.

At the time our story becomes interested in her fortunes, Mrs. Lacey
was a middle-aged woman, but appeared older than her years warranted,
from the long-continued strain of incessant toil, and from that which
wears much faster still, the depression of an unhappy, ill-mated life.
Her face wore the pathetic expression of confirmed discouragement. She
reminded one of soldiers fighting when they know that it is of no use,
and that defeat will be the only result, but who fight on
mechanically, in obedience to orders.

She is now placing a very plain but wholesome and well-prepared
breakfast on the table, and it would seem that both the eating and
cooking were carried on in the same large living-room. Her daughter, a
rosy-cheeked, half-grown girl of fourteen, was assisting her, and both
mother and daughter seemed in a nervous state of expectancy, as if
hoping and fearing the result of a near event. A moment's glance
showed that this event related to a lad of about seventeen, who was