ot afford to embroider much the bare facts of existence or to turn
their attention far from the necessities of life. "Her'll be weak," one
woman said, "an' for a long time--never so strong as her was before.
'Tis always worse after each one you has, 'cepting the first, which is
worst of all, I say. But there, her must take it as it comes...."

Sundry other bits of good practical philosophy I perforce listened to;
and at last, when everybody had turned in (I imagined their pleasant
lightheadedness as they snuggled under the bedclothes in the stuffy
cottage rooms--the witticisms and echoes of laughter that were running
through their heads); when, I say, everybody had turned in, an offended
dog in the hotel yard began to howl.

If it were not that the window of the back bedroom is over the
scullery, the ash-heap and the main drain, I would ask to move back
there.

In Under Town a birth makes the stir that is due to such a stupendous
event.

4

[Sidenote: _THE KITCHEN_]

The Widger's kitchen is an extraordinary room--fit shrine for that
household symbol, the big enamelled tin teapot. At the NW. corner is
the door to the scullery and to the small walled-in garden which
contains--in order of importance--flotsam and jetsam for firewood, old
masts, spars and rudders, and some weedy, grub-eaten vegetables. At the
top of the garden is a tumble-down cat-haunted linhay, crammed to its
leaky roof with fishing gear. No doubt it is the presence everywhere of
boat and fishing gear which gives such a singular unity to the whole
place.

The kitchen is not a very light room: its low small-paned window is in
the N. wall. Then, going round the room, the courting chair stands in
the NE. corner, below some shelves laden with fancy china and
souvenirs--and tackle. The kitchener, which opens out into quite a
comforting fireplace, is let into the E. wall, and close beside it is
the provision cupboard, so situated that the cockroaches, having ample
food and warmth, shall wax fat and multiply. Next, behind a low dirty
door in the S. wall, is the coalhole, then the high dresser, and then
the door to the narrow front passage, beneath the ceiling of which are
lodged masts, spars and sails. The W. wall of the kitchen is decorated
with Tony's Oddfellow 'cistificate,' with old almanacs and with a
number of small pictures, all more or less askew.

There is an abundance of chairs, most of them with an old cushion on
the seat, all of them more