him
out of the mausoleum of a parlour into the kitchen.

That was a little, darkish room too, but it was smothered in white lace.
The mother had seated herself again by the cupboard, and was drawing
thread from a vast web of lace. A clump of fluff and ravelled cotton was
at her right hand, a heap of three-quarter-inch lace lay on her
left, whilst in front of her was the mountain of lace web, piling the
hearthrug. Threads of curly cotton, pulled out from between the lengths
of lace, strewed over the fender and the fireplace. Paul dared not go
forward, for fear of treading on piles of white stuff.

On the table was a jenny for carding the lace. There was a pack of brown
cardboard squares, a pack of cards of lace, a little box of pins, and on
the sofa lay a heap of drawn lace.

The room was all lace, and it was so dark and warm that the white, snowy
stuff seemed the more distinct.

"If you're coming in you won't have to mind the work," said Mrs.
Radford. "I know we're about blocked up. But sit you down."

Clara, much embarrassed, gave him a chair against the wall opposite the
white heaps. Then she herself took her place on the sofa, shamedly.

"Will you drink a bottle of stout?" Mrs. Radford asked. "Clara, get him
a bottle of stout."

He protested, but Mrs. Radford insisted.

"You look as if you could do with it," she said. "Haven't you never any
more colour than that?"

"It's only a thick skin I've got that doesn't show the blood through,"
he answered.

Clara, ashamed and chagrined, brought him a bottle of stout and a glass.
He poured out some of the black stuff.

"Well," he said, lifting the glass, "here's health!"

"And thank you," said Mrs. Radford.

He took a drink of stout.

"And light yourself a cigarette, so long as you don't set the house on
fire," said Mrs. Radford.

"Thank you," he replied.

"Nay, you needn't thank me," she answered. "I s'll be glad to smell a
bit of smoke in th' 'ouse again. A house o' women is as dead as a house
wi' no fire, to my thinkin'. I'm not a spider as likes a corner to
myself. I like a man about, if he's only something to snap at."

Clara began to work. Her jenny spun with a subdued buzz; the white
lace hopped from between her fingers on to the card. It was filled; she
snipped off the length, and pinned the end down to the banded lace. Then
she put a new card in her jenny. Paul watched her. She sat square and
magnificent. Her throat and arms were bare. The blood