The room was dark so that I was not sure it was day until through the thin walls I heard Mr. Henderson’s voice. “Sarah!” he called. “Oh, Sarah! Bring me the gaff like a good girl,” and I knew that he was going out to his lobster pots. Immediately afterward, the bells of the Catholic church rang eight o’clock and my mother sat up, as though the sound had alarmed her. She tested the temperature of the room by exhaling her breath in little puffs and saw, by the vapor issuing from her mouth, that it was keenly cold. Before she got out of bed, she shivered into her blue wrapper and drew on her stockings. I opened my eyes and asked, “Why am I in the bed, Mamma?”

She smiled. “Because your father went off somewhere last night. We are all alone, darling.”

“Did he go in the storm?”

She nodded, but her thoughts were not on him. “You lie there till the fire is going,” she said. “Maybe you won’t go to school today? I’ll make you a boiled egg for breakfast!” The prospect of so unusual a festivity brought a dancing light into her eyes, and with a liveliness I had never seen in her before, she moved about the room, stroking the velvety leaves of the geraniums which still stood on the bureau.

“He said he was going to put them into the stove because his pot got broken,” she said as she took the flowers down. “But I hid them in time.”

I lay still after she had left the room, listening to her shaking down the ashes and drawing water for the tea. I remembered, as from a dim former life, that some time in the night I had staggered, bloated with sleep, upon my mother’s arm into the bedroom and I had flung out protesting arms and had muttered, “Leave me be,” as she took off my middy blouse and undid the waist from my skirt.