She took the handle of the brass scuttle in both hands and carried it with difficulty across the kitchen and up the stairs and into the back sitting room. She found that Hubert had already put a match to the fire, which she had laid ready with paper and wood and a few bits of coal that she had dotted across the top of it. He was fanning the small blaze with his open newspaper, his evening paper. He turned when she came in, and the newspaper billowed toward the fire and then blazed up. Hubert dropped the newspaper in his fright. Mrs. Derdon ran and got the poker and pushed the newspaper into the grate. Scraps of the blazing newspaper floated out and around the room. While she was stamping them out, Hubert raced off to the kitchen shouting, “That’s all right, that’s all right. I’ll get some water!” and then he came dashing in with the hot kettle that he had snatched off the stove and poured a stream of water all over the fireplace. The fire, already tamed, gave up at once and turned into black soup, which streamed out between the bars of the grate and down onto the tiles of the hearth, where it settled into puddles of various sizes and shapes.

Mrs. Derdon sat down in a chair and began to cry helplessly. She hid her face behind her hands and then she pushed her hands into her hair and pushed her hair about and then she wrapped her arms about herself and rocked in grief. Disorder had finally prevailed against her, and there was nothing further she could do. She could kill herself over this room now and it would never look the same. This was the worst thing Hubert had ever done, and John had not been here to see it, and she would never be able to find the words to describe it to him. She glared at Hubert, who was watching her with dislike and alarm.

“Oh, what will I do!” she cried.

“Oh, for God’s sake, pull yourself together,” Hubert cried. “What ails you? No harm done.”

“What ails me?” she cried. “It’s what ails you coming in here and setting fire to the grate with nothing in it but paper. You couldn’t come down to the kitchen and ask me for the coal. Oh, no, not you. You’ll wait till it’s brought up to you and burn down the house in the meantime.”

“You shut up!” Hubert shouted. “Do you hear me? Shut up before I say something you won’t want to hear.”

“First you drive my son out of the house and then you try to burn the place down around my ears, around my ears!” Mrs. Derdon screamed.