But not that night. She resisted
the impulse to bid her be silent, left the room and stood at
the hall window. When she returned Mrs. Tucker was in bed, was
snoring in a tranquillity that was the reverse of contagious.
With her habitual cheerfulness she had adapted herself to her
changed condition without fretting. She had become as ragged
and as dirty as her neighbors; she so wrought upon Susan's
sensibilities, blunted though they were, that the girl would
have been unable to sleep in the same bed if she had not always
been tired to exhaustion when she lay down. But for that
matter only exhaustion could have kept her asleep in that
vermin-infested hole. Even the fiercest swarms of the insects
that flew or ran or crawled and bit, even the filthy mice
squeaking as they played upon the covers or ran over the faces
of the sleepers, did not often rouse her.
While Mrs. Tucker snored, Susan worked on, getting every piece
of at all fit clothing in her meager wardrobe into the best
possible condition. She did not once glance at the face of the
noisy sleeper--a face homely enough in Mrs. Tucker's waking
hours, hideous now with the mouth open and a few scattered
rotten teeth exposed, and the dark yellow-blue of the unhealthy
gums and tongue.
At dawn Mrs. Tucker awoke with a snort and a start. She rubbed
her eyes with her dirty and twisted and wrinkled fingers--the
nails were worn and broken, turned up as if warped at the
edges, blackened with dirt and bruisings.
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