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It was night.
Then Paul ran anxiously into the kitchen. The one candle still burned on
the table, the big fire glowed red. Mrs. Morel sat alone. On the hob
the saucepan steamed; the dinner-plate lay waiting on the table. All
the room was full of the sense of waiting, waiting for the man who was
sitting in his pit-dirt, dinnerless, some mile away from home, across
the darkness, drinking himself drunk. Paul stood in the doorway.
"Has my dad come?" he asked.
"You can see he hasn't," said Mrs. Morel, cross with the futility of the
question.
Then the boy dawdled about near his mother. They shared the same
anxiety. Presently Mrs. Morel went out and strained the potatoes.
"They're ruined and black," she said; "but what do I care?"
Not many words were spoken. Paul almost hated his mother for suffering
because his father did not come home from work.
"What do you bother yourself for?" he said. "If he wants to stop and get
drunk, why don't you let him?"
"Let him!" flashed Mrs. Morel. "You may well say 'let him'.


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