She had been restless that night, sitting at the kitchen table with no one paying any attention to her. Her mother and the woman next door had been sitting facing each other across the fire. Jimmy was on his mother’s lap and she was holding him close to her, with one arm along his leg and the other arm around him and around his neck, her hand on his neck cuddling him while she talked over the top of his head to the woman next door. Jimmy had been wearing the short trousers that his mother had made for him from an old skirt of her own, and the red jersey that his mother had knitted for him. The mother had taken off his boots and stockings when Rose brought him home from school, and his little feet shone in the light from the fire.

Rose had sat there wanting to hold Jimmy but afraid to ask, and at last she had said that she thought she would just run upstairs and see how her daddy was. But her mother, who was different in her ways when they had visitors, had given her a look that Rose knew was put on for the benefit of the woman next door and had said, “You stay where you are, Miss, and let your daddy have his rest. I’ll be the one to decide when it’s time to wake him. Do you hear me?” And the mother had given a significant nod at the woman next door and said, “Rose is the greatest little busybody you ever saw.”

And the woman next door had smiled, not very nicely, and said, “She’s just looking for notice. Isn’t that it, Rose?”

“Oh, she wants notice, all right,” the mother had said. “But sure, he spoils her. No matter what I say, he spoils her. And it’s only going to make it harder for her in the long run.”

“Nothing worse than a spoiled child,” the woman next door had said, and then they had gone on to talk of something else, and Rose had sat patiently on until her mother had seen fit to go upstairs to where the father lay.