Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/91

 "Aw, hell, let 'er go the way she is," he muttered disgustedly, and felt in his pocket for another chew of tobacco.

It was to this house of many little golden windows that the Pippingers were now coming in the darkness. Arrived at the door, they turned their lanterns low and set them beside several other low-burning lanterns that stood in a little cluster against the house wall. Pushing open the door and entering without knock or ceremony, they found themselves in a stifling hot room crowded with people. The dim glare of two small kerosene lamps seemed a brilliant illumination after the darkness of outside; and for a moment they were dazzled.

Addie Pooler, the eldest girl, came forward and escorted Judith and the twins to a shedlike leanto back of the house where the Pooler boys slept and which was now doing duty as a dressing room. Here the four youngest Pooler children were already asleep all in one bed, two at each end, under a quilt roughly constructed of various sized pieces of dark colored goods cut from the less worn portions of men's old coats and trousers. Several sleeping babies were disposed here and there about the room on improvised beds made of overcoats or lap-robes. The girls put their coats and scarves on another large bed already piled with outdoor clothing, patted their hair a little in front of the small, face-distorting mirror over the chest of drawers, and followed Addie back into the kitchen.

Here the party was not yet under way. The women and girls and small children of both sexes were sitting or standing self-consciously about the walls. For the most part they sat bolt upright and stared straight ahead of them. Now and then they eyed each other covertly. Sometimes a woman would speak to her neighbor in a hushed voice and thus start up a small whispered conversation; but of general talk there was none. Almost all of them, daughters and mothers alike, were painfully thin, with pinched, angular features and peculiarly dead expressionless eyes. The faces of the girls wore already an old, patient, settled look, as though a black dress and a few gray hairs would make them sisters instead of daughters of the older women.