do so,
"Come in and shut the door after you!"

"Your daughter!" I said, trying to think of something to say that would
show what I thought of him, her, and their dirty pretense; "your
daughter! Hell!"

"Young man," said he, drawing himself up stiffly, "what do you mean--?"

"I mean to find my mother!" I cried. "Where is she?"

Suddenly the thought of being halted thus longer, and the fear that my
mother was not there, drove me crazy. I lunged at Rucker, and with a
sweep of my arms, threw him staggering across the room. The girl
screamed, and ran to, and behind him. I stormed through to the kitchen,
expecting to find my mother back there, working for this smooth, sly,
scroundrelly pair; but the place was deserted. There were dirty pots and
pans about; and a pile of unwashed dishes stacked high in the sink--and
this struck me with despair. If my mother had been about, and able to
work, such a thing would have been impossible. So she either was not
there or was not able to work--my instinct told me that; and I ran to
the foot of the stairs, and calling as I had so often done when a child,
"Ma, Ma! Where are you, ma!" I waited to hear her answer.

Rucker, pale as a sheet, came up to me, his quivering mouth trying to
work itself into a sneaking sort of smile.

"Why, Jacob, Jakey," he drooled, "is this you? I didn't know you. Sit
down, my son, and I'll tell you the sad, sad news!"

I heard him, but I did not trust nor understand him, and I went through
that house from cellar to garret, looking for her; my heart freezing
within me as I saw how impossible it would be for her to live so. There
were two bedrooms, both beds lying just as they had been left in the
morning--and my mother always opened her beds up for an airing when she
rose, and made them up right after breakfast.

The room occupied by the young woman was the room of a slut; the
clothes she had taken off the night before, or even before that, lay in
a ring about the place where her feet had been when she dropped them in
the dust and lint which rolled about in the corners like feathers. Her
corset was thrown down in a corner; shoes and stockings littered the
floor; her comb was clogged with red hair like a wire fence with dead
grass after a freshet; dingy, grimy underclothing lay about. I peered
into a closet, in which there were more garments on the floor than on
the nails. The other bedroom was quite as unkempt; looking as if the
occupant must always do hi