parlor, gay with an ingrain carpet and dolorous with a funeral
card and a death-picture of one of her numerous departed babes, was kept
strictly for company. The blinds were always down, and her barefooted
tribe was never permitted to enter the sacred precinct save on state
occasions. She cooked, and all ate, in the kitchen, where she likewise
washed, starched, and ironed clothes on all days of the week except
Sunday; for her income came largely from taking in washing from her more
prosperous neighbors. Remained the bedroom, small as the one occupied by
Martin, into which she and her seven little ones crowded and slept. It
was an everlasting miracle to Martin how it was accomplished, and from
her side of the thin partition he heard nightly every detail of the going
to bed, the squalls and squabbles, the soft chattering, and the sleepy,
twittering noises as of birds. Another source of income to Maria were
her cows, two of them, which she milked night and morning and which
gained a surreptitious livelihood from vacant lots and the grass that
grew on either side the public side walks, attended always by one or more
of her ragged boys, whose watchful guardianship consisted chiefly in
keeping their eyes out for the poundmen.

In his own small room Martin lived, slept, studied, wrote, and kept
house. Before the one window, looking out on the tiny front porch, was
the kitchen table that served as desk, library, and type-writing stand.
The bed, against the rear wall, occupied two-thirds of the total space of
the room. The table was flanked on one side by a gaudy bureau,
manufactured for profit and not for service, the thin veneer of which was
shed day by day. This bureau stood in the corner, and in the opposite
corner, on the table's other flank, was the kitchen--the oil-stove on a
dry-goods box, inside of which were dishes and cooking utensils, a shelf
on the wall for provisions, and a bucket of water on the floor. Martin
had to carry his water from the kitchen sink, there being no tap in his
room. On days when there was much steam to his cooking, the harvest of
veneer from the bureau was unusually generous. Over the bed, hoisted by
a tackle to the ceiling, was his bicycle. At first he had tried to keep
it in the basement; but the tribe of Silva, loosening the bearings and
puncturing the tires, had driven him out. Next he attempted the tiny
front porch, until a howling southeaster drenched the wheel a night-long.