house. He made horrible noises in the kitchen and mother was tired and
wanted to sleep."

Mary Underwood began running about the room. From a little alcove under a
stairway she took clothes, throwing them upon the floor about the room.
She pulled on a stocking and, unconscious of Sam's presence, raised her
skirts and fastened it. Then, putting one shoe on the stockinged foot and
the other on the bare one, she turned to him. "We will go back to your
house. I think you are right. You need a woman there."

In the street she walked rapidly along, clinging to the arm of the tall
fellow who strode silently beside her. A cheerfulness had come over Sam.
He felt he had accomplished something--something he had set out to
accomplish. He again thought of his mother and drifting into the notion
that he was on his way home from work at Freedom Smith's, began planning
the evening he would spend with her.

"I will tell her of the letter from the Chicago company and of what I will
do when I go to the city," he thought.

At the gate before the McPherson house Mary looked into the road below the
grassy bank that ran down from the fence, but in the darkness she could
see nothing. The rain continued to fall and the wind screamed and shouted
as it rushed through the bare branches of the trees. Sam went through the
gate and around the house to the kitchen door intent upon getting to his
mother's bedside.

In the house the neighbour woman sat asleep in a chair before the kitchen
stove. The daughter had gone.