Considering the fact that the rear room was a composite kitchen,
laundry, dining-room, pantry, coal house and cellar, the glances with
which Myrtella swept the chamber and its one occupant, might have been
a trifle less severe. It was a glance in which her individual
abhorrence of dirt combined with her racial disapproval of "in-laws."

In the one space in the room that was not preempted, Maria Flathers
bent above a wash tub, feebly persuading black garments to become
gray. That was all she asked of them. She was not ambitious. Ambition,
like everything else, had been soaked out of her long ago by those
hot, steaming suds that enveloped her the greater part of her waking
hours, and left her physically, mentally, and morally limp. Her one
strong instinct was motherhood; but five little Flathers, opening
feeble eyes on their future environment, had become so discouraged
that they promptly closed them again. It was as if they really could
not stand the prospect of life in that home with Mr. and Mrs. Flathers
for parents!

Only Chick survived, the ash-barrel baby, who really was not theirs at
all, but who having begun life in their back yard, continued as
everything else continued when once established at the Flathers', for
the simple reason that no one ever took the trouble to change the
existing disorder of things.

As Myrtella sailed wrathfully into port and docked at the door-step,
Maria looked up with a gasp:

"Law! Myrtella, you gimme a turn. I forgot this here was your
afternoon off. I thought sure you was Sheeley's rent man."