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The Veteran doors were open, and from where she stood in the kitchen she could see the bed she shared with Elsie, with its wretched heap of coverings. The sitting room contained nothing but a collection of odds and ends of rubbish which belonged to Charley, his 'things' as he called them: bits of wood, string and rope; one wheel of a perambulator, a top, an iron hoop, and other treasures. Through the other door she could see the dilapidated bedstead that had been used by the old people, the flock protruding through the ragged covering of the mattress.

As she stood there with the letter in her hand, faint and weary in the midst of all this desolation, it seemed to her as if the whole world were falling to pieces and crumbling away all around her. She sank down on a chair by the table and her head fell limply forward on her arms. 271