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The oval table was covered with a plain yellow oil-cloth. At the middle stood a heavy earthenware dish filled with steaming, half-peeled potatoes, and near it, on a folded newspaper, an agateware sauce-pan held beet-roots. Five plates of blurred willow pattern were piled by the father’s place, while before them a roast of pork, with crisply-browned skin, still sizzled in its own grease. By the woman’s place, at the opposite end, stood a large agate tea-pot and a chunk of uncolored butter, upon whose surface salt crystals sparkled in the lamplight. The lamp was shaded by a sloping collar of scorched pasteboard, while the constant flicker of the yellow flame rendered tremulously uncertain the faces around the board.

Mauney’s usual taciturnity, inspired by a feeling of being constantly misunderstood whenever he spoke, was increased by the pain in his hand, so that he sat in silence, catching the conversation of the others as something quite outside his own immediate consciousness. He was thinking about a new book the school teacher had loaned him.