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Anna reached out in her sleep; her hand stretched out and touched the body that lay breathing warmly beside her. But it was not her husband's body; the habitual movement was interrupted. She awoke.

"Dinah," she whispered in surprise. "What are you doing here? Where's your father?"

Dinah awoke slowly, as if the sleep were her fortress, and she was slow to surrender it.

"Where's father? Where's your father?"

"He went out," Dinah answered.

"Went out! It's still nighttime!"

"He had his paints."

Innocent enough, it was surely innocent enough. Then why did he say nothing to her, if he meant to arise early and go paint? No, no, she knew it was more than a painting trip this time; knew at once, in fact, that John Kirkham had left her for good. Dinah must have seen the grief and fear in her face, for the girl began to tremble.

"Hush, be still; why are you shaking, child?" Anna asked.

"I'm cold," Dinah answered.

"So am I," Anna whispered. "But we'll be strong women together, won't we, Dinah, and help each other. Won't we? Won't we?" And after holding her daughter for a while, Anna felt the clenched arms grow limp, felt the girl's hot breath get slow. Sleep, child. Sleep, child. Over and over Anna said the words to herself. Sleep, child. He said he loved me. And the children, said he loved the children. Sleep, child. He'll be back before breakfast. Sleep, sleep, child.

But he did not come for breakfast. Charlie took it all calmly enough, but Robert's questions showed that he could not be fooled. Dinah was quiet, of course: Who could tell what this strange child thought behind her silence?

She sent Robert and Dinah off to school, and once the breakfast dishes were cleared away, she told Charlie to bring the Bible and come with her as she did the laundry. She lugged the large basket down the stairs. Of course he'll come back. I have all his shirts here, he must come back and get them.

"Tell me the piece you learned yesterday, from the Bible, Charlie."

"The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," he said. "'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine.'"

She turned on him in fury. "Who told you to learn that piece!"

"No one," he said.

She saw that he was terrified. How could he have known? She softened toward him. "Charlie, another book. Not that one. That's all. Just not that one."

So he began to recite a passage out of Wealth of Nations. John had always sneered at her for having the boy learn Adam Smith as if he were Homer. "He doesn't understand a word of it," John had said. "And the Psalms! No one understands those but God and King David, and I'm not altogether sure about God."

Charlie droned on about diminishing supply and increasing demand. The Song of Songs. The first time the Song of Songs meant something to her was at a picnic with John Kirkham by the River Medlock, far upriver of Manchester, up where the water was perfect and clear. They were only ten days from their wedding, and he had read passages of Song of Songs as they leaned in the grass of the riverbank. It was too much for her, his voice, his beauty, and her own desire. She let him take her -- or did she force herself upon him? -- she was never sure. Enough that they had sinned; immediately afterward they burned so with shame that they knelt and prayed for forgiveness of the sin. She thought that surely God would strike them down for their impudence, to pray after fornication. Yet even as she prayed, Anna had wondered how God could have been so cruel as to create man and woman in such a way that they could not resist each other's beauty, and then command them upon threat of eternal torment not to have each other till the black-frocked pastor gave consent.

Oddly, she remembered, John was more ashamed of his loss of self-control than she had been, and on their wedding night he had trembled and fumbled so that she could hardly believe he was not a virgin. "Just like before, John," she had whispered. "It should work a second time, don't you think?" And he laughed and mumbled something about being out of his element when he couldn't hear the rush of clear water and the singing of a bird. "It'll be a lonely winter, then," she had answered, "'til the birds come back and the rivers thaw." John adapted quickly. Six pregnancies, and three children who lived into their second year. We may not be good at money, but children we can make.

"Why are you crying, Mother?"

"I'm not."

Charlie helped her wring the shirts, and they carried the heavy basket into the house together. There was Robert, books in hand, standing at the foot of the stairs.

"Why aren't you in school?" she asked sharply.

"He's never coming back."

Since she couldn't argue, she reached out and held him. He clung to her, and cried a little, hiding the shame of his tears in his mother's shoulder.

Charlie looked on in puzzlement, and finally, to Anna's annoyance and Robert's rage, began to cry. "Hold me, Mother! I'm sad!" So she held him, and shook her head at Robert to stop him from saying anything cutting to his little brother.

All afternoon she kept the boys busy at household tasks. She half-expected Dinah to show up at noon, or at least before the close of school. Was she that much stronger than Robert, that she could bear to be among the other children at a time like this? But there was another reason why Dinah was so strong. She had believed her father's final words to her.

She looked around the moment she got home. "Is he back yet?"

"No," Anna said.

"Then soon," she said confidently.

"He won't be back," Robert said.

"He said he would," Dinah answered. That settled it. There could be no more argument. I have failed you somewhere in your education, Anna said silently to her daughter. I didn't teach you to recognize a lie. I didn't teach you that fathers abandon families and lie to their children as they leave.

For once, Dinah was not quiet at night. Instead she talked and talked, and the longer she went on, the clearer it became that she, too, knew that John had left them all for good. "He'll come back and give us carriage rides tomorrow," Dinah said. "He'll come back with marzipan. He'll have a beautiful painting of the king on his horse. And he won't be tired, so he'll be glad to play with us."

Charlie was drinking it in, but Robert could not bear it. "Why do you lie about carriage rides?"

"It's not a lie!" Dinah shouted back at him.

Anna was not used to hearing Dinah shout. "Children, enough of that now. We don't know where your father went, or when he'll bother to come home or tell us something of what he means to do. And in the meantime, it's better not to think of him returning. That way when he comes it'll be a surprise."

Robert frowned. "I don't need to have you trick me to be happy. I'm almost a man now, and I can bear the truth."

Can you? Then try this truth, Anna thought. My time of month is five days late. Only six times in my life has such a thing happened, and each time it meant there was a child in me. See what you make of such a parting gift from my loving husband. I wonder if you'd want the truth, if you guessed even a tenth of what lies ahead of us. Less than twenty pounds in the box under the bed, after what he so kindly took. Bear that for a while, and see how straight you stand.

Those were her thoughts; her voice, when she spoke, was kinder. "You aren't almost a man, Robert, you are a man, and must act like one for our sake. You must be strong, like a father to Charlie and Dinah and a good right arm to me."

It was only then that Dinah openly admitted what had happened. And at the age of ten, she was already something like the woman she was going to be. "If father's gone, then we'll have no money," she said. "We'll have to stop going to school."

"Not right away," Anna said. "The week's tuition is already paid."

"And his paintings," Dinah said. "We can sell them."

It was a horrifying thought -- the paintings, I can't sell my husband's paintings! How could this child think of such a thing!

But by week's end, Anna knew her daughter was right. She sold the frames for ten and sixpence. The man took the canvases as well, but only gave her three shillings for them. Anna didn't think twice. They couldn't eat canvas; and if three shillings was all the paint was worth, so be it. It was the only patrimony John Kirkham's children would ever get. Anna thought of giving a shilling to each child. Here, Robert, here, Charlie, your inheritance. Here, Dinah, your dowry. Thank your loving father.

When she came home to the bare-walled cottage, bearing the payment, Robert brought in a stack of books from the other room. "These, too," he said.

"No," Anna answered.

"His paintings, and not the books?" It was a quiet rebellion, but no less dangerous for all that.

"Aye," she said. "We keep the books, we sell the paintings. Because we're not tradesmen, we're better than that. My father was a learned man, and even wrote a book. We will read and we will write, and we will think great thoughts because those that don't might as well be sheep."

Then she counted out their money on the table. "Enough for three months," she said. "If we scrimp."

"I'll take work," Robert said.

"And so will I, and so no doubt will Dinah, and Charlie's only seven but in a few years he'll earn his pennies, too. But you're all children, and they scarce pay grown men enough to stay alive in the sort of work you'd have to do. And what can I do, blessed as I am with John's last gift to me?" She tried to laugh, to make her worry seem like exasperation, but the children were not fooled. Humble as their cottage was, it was too rich for them now. And before the money ran out, Anna found them another place.

The man wasn't there yet to cart their goods, but the furniture was stacked in the street, ready to be loaded. Dinah went alone upstairs. She found Robert there, sitting with his back to the wardrobe in what had been his father's and mother's room. The wardrobe belonged to the landlord, and would stay. He did not look up when Dinah entered. Only stared at the wall where the paper had faded above the headboard of his parents' bed.

"Sir Redcrosse," Dinah said.

At that he stirred and looked at her. He remembered the ancient game they had played, and smiled at her. "Fair Lady Una, I fear this is no fit habitation for thee."

"Enough for me or any Christian, if the love of God is here."

Robert resisted the game for a moment; he was too old, he was a man, he couldn't play with his sister as they had in the attic of the store, when they had lived above it. He laughed; he shook his head; he refused.

But Dinah's dream was too strong for him -- it always was. She showed no sign of being Dinah Kirkham at all. She was Una, and she pled with him to help her on her way. "But beware of the dread monster Error," she warned him, and her voice was so afraid and yet so stern with authority that he could only whisper to her, "I fear you misjudge me, Lady. A knight I am called, but my armor is borrowed, and my arm is yet untried in battle."

She reached out and touched his cheek. "Sir Redcrosse, every knight must fight his first battle, and if it against a great enemy, so much more the worship that will come to him in victory."

"You're too good at this," Robert said, making his last try at ending the game.

"If you won't fight for my good, Sir Redcrosse," Dinah whispered, "then I am surely alone."

She was so mournful that it touched his heart despite his unwillingness to play. He got to his feet, he looked down at his sister, who looked upward to him with so much hope, and he believed her. She saw him as Sir Redcrosse, and so it must be true. In the hour before the carter came to load the furniture and bear them all away, Sir Redcrosse slew Error, killed the dragon, and discerned the false Duessa, restoring Una to her rightful place.

"Thank you, my lord," Dinah said to him at the end.

"I don't know which you do better, Dinah. Una or Duessa."

Dinah at last returned to herself, and laughed sadly, laughed in a way that made Robert think she must surely be older than her mere ten years. "I do best with the one that's really me."" Robert did not ask her which that was. He thought he knew.

They walked before the cart up Portland Street to Piccadilly and from there through the heart of mercantile Manchester. They had not been poor long enough for their clothing to be wretched, but Robert keenly felt the fact that the men who got in and out of carriages were dressed in a way that would have made his father look and feel rather fine, and not as tired and emptied-out as he had looked since Robert had been old enough to notice such things. The men in fine clothing greeted each other jovially on the street, but said nothing, gave no sign they even saw the many common tradesmen who passed by on errands through the streets.

"Why are they rich?" Robert asked his mother.

"Hush," she said, not wishing to be conspicuous, though in fact no one paid them the slightest notice.

"Why are they so fine? Why not us?"

"Because they have the money," Anna said impatiently.

"And how did they get it?" asked Robert.

"By being wise and educated and deserving and by praying to God always."

Robert was silent for a few moments, and Anna thought she had done with the foolish conversation.

"I," he announced loudly, shattering her delusion, "shall also be wise and educated and deserving and pray to God always."

"You still won't be rich," Dinah said. Anna looked sharply at her daughter, wondering, as she always did, how much her daughter really understood.

"Why not!" Robert demanded.

"Because," Dinah answered, "they won't give any of their money to such a poor boy as you."

Robert digested this idea in silence for awhile. A carriage came briskly through the street, horses atrot, and the driver cursed at their carter, who only shrugged. The man inside the carriage seemed not to notice the argument, did not seem to notice the street at all. Robert watched after him, and finally said, "If they won't give me any money, then I'll take it from them."

Anna grabbed his jacket from behind, whirled him around, and held him by the ears as she spoke directly into his face. "Take? You never take what belongs to another man, Robert, not as long as you're my son! And if I hear you talk like that again you'll not be my son, for I won't have a coveter and a thief in my family!"

"I didn't mean it." Robert was ashamed, and frightened, too. Anna did not often get so angry.

"We're educated people, God-fearing people, and I swear to God before you, my children, that we shall be honest in the sight of God, even if it means we starve!"

"All well and good, mum," said the carter behind her, "but if we must keep stopping in the road we'll never get wherever it is we're getting."

As they went up Long Mill Gate Road the buildings changed. The money had stayed behind in the heart of the city, or had been deftly carried to the nicest neighborhoods. Here the offices gave way to cheap shops, and the shops began to look filthy, with shabby buildings opening to courts knee-deep in rubbish. The people changed, too, and now the family was rather unusually well-dressed, and instead of ignoring them as the businessmen had done, the passersby stared. Such people as lived in this borough recognized bad fortune when they saw it; they had sampled enough to be connoisseurs. They watched the Kirkhams pass, and were careful to step back, to be ready to run or ward away the evil chance if they should come too near. The smell of cheap alcohol was pungent in the streets, along with other odors that it would not do to identify.

"What's it like where we're going?" Charlie asked.

"I don't know," answered his mother. "I only know the price, which is cheap, and the place, which isn't far now."

"Any farther," Robert mumbled," and we'll be living with the hogs."

They turned off the road just before the bridge over the River Irk, and the carter could only go a little way on the rough turning. "Close as I can go, mum."

Anna looked at the row houses that fronted on the river. They looked abandoned, the doors swinging open, neither glass nor boards in the windows. "How much farther is it?" she asked.

"Oh, you're here. Number four must be the fourth cottage in."

The fourth cottage looked no better than the rest -- abandoned, dead, unlivable.

"I must go and see."

Anna took Robert's hand, commanded the other children to stay with the cart, and walked along the uneven path leading to the fourth cottage. As they approached, the smell got more and more pungent, and there was no denying what it was -- human excrement in varying stages of decay.

"We've been cheated," Robert said softly.

"Not for the first time," Anna answered.

A shutter opened above them, and a woman's head poked out. "You new?" asked the woman.

"I think so," Anna said. "You mean someone lives here?"

"Lovely place, ain't it?" The woman giggled. "But you don't live on the ground floor. You live above." The woman was incredibly thin, and though she giggled, there wasn't a trace of a smile on her face. "Are you in number four?"

Yes.

"Looks like we're neighbors. Folks died of cholera in number four. Or something. My name's Barton. Nomi Barton."

"Kirkham, Anna. Which one is number four?"

"Three down from here. They starts the numbers from the other end, Lord knows why. You get upstairs through the ground floor, but tread careful, hi-ho!" The shutter closed.

Anna led the way into the house that would be their home. The stench was overpowering. The floor had been used as a privy for a long time, and was still used that way, judging from the pools of urine shining in the light from the courtyard windows. Their feet skidded on the floor. Anna held her skirts high, found the stairway in the dim light, and gingerly made her way to it, climbed the creaking treads, and opened the door at the top of the stairs.

Better, the upstairs room, but only by contrast. The plaster walls were chipped, in some places right down to the brick. And daylight came through on such a spot, proof that the walls were only one brick thick. The floor was grimy, the ceiling webbed, and the ash from the fireplace had been strewn across the floor.

"Mother, we can't," said Robert.

"What we must we can, and what we can we will," she said. Her mother had always said it, and she hoped that it was true.

"Surely God loves us better than to make us live here."

Anna had no answer for that. She walked around the room, as if she were hoping to find a door leading somewhere else, somewhere livable. Someone screamed, not far away, screamed and then began jabbering and shouting, the voice finally trailing away into nothing. A dog barked. Anna remembered her father's dogs, and knew they would never have been permitted to sleep in such a place as this. Her mother's wooden floors, always gleaming; fine places on a proud kitchen table; four rooms with only three of them in the family, so that her father had a library. But he had died, the college had taken back the rooms, and even the library had gone to help John Kirkham pay his impossible burden of debt.

There would be no lace curtains at these windows, she knew. And she wondered what her children would remember, when they got to be her age. She could remember romping down the stairs with the dogs, sliding down the banister, splashing in mud and getting a delicious and half-hearted whipping for it from a father who had not forgotten about unsanctioned fun. But her children -- they'd remember only that they must walk carefully downstairs, and instead of cut flowers in a bowl, they would know only the smell of --

She leaned her head against the doorjamb and breathed deeply to keep herself from weeping. Robert looked at her in awe. He did not know what went on in adult minds, but he knew that his mother was in pain.

"It's all right, Mother. We'll clean it up in no time."

"Aye," his mother said bitterly.

"And I'll work hard, and soon we'll have enough money to move away."

"I'm not the kind of woman," Anna said softly, "who lives in such a place."

"Then we'll make it the sort of place where a woman such as you can live."

Anna turned to him, gravely touched his cheek. "If only your father..." she said, then repented of the thought, and said instead, "I can depend on you, can't I?"

Robert nodded, troubled at his mother's intensity.

"We must move the furniture inside," she said, suddenly businesslike. "The beds will go by the window, the dresser under it, the table here. Will that be good?"

No, of course not, nothing would be good, but neither of them would say it now, and when they returned to the children -- for Robert was not one of the children now -- they were cheerful. "Just needs a bit of fixing up," Robert told them.

"Will you help us with the furniture?" Anna asked the carter.

"Aye, for two shillings."

"Two shillings! Two shillings was your price to bring everything here!"

"The horse brung it here, mum, but the horse won't carry it upstairs. I charges for me the same as for the horse. S'only fair."

"Fair. Do as you like, then, we'll carry it ourselves. But kindly wait here until we're through, so we don't have to set it all out in the mud. There'll be an extra tuppence for you if you wait."

"My money, mum."

"I'll pay you when we've unloaded everything. Charlie, you wait here with the man. Robert and Dinah, you hold one end of the bed and I'll hold the other, while this strong man watches us do a man's work." The carter was oblivious to her abuse -- it would take much harsher language for him to notice he was being insulted. It took a half hour to get the two beds upstairs, and the clothing and the table took nearly as long again. The two children couldn't carry too far without resting, and Anna was weakened more than a little by the pregnancy.

They returned last of all for the bureau, but the cart was gone. Charlie was standing where it had been, trying to whistle. Anna knew at once what had happened. The dresser was easily worth half a pound, much better payment than the two shillings Anna would have given the carter. "Charlie! Why didn't you tell us he was leaving!"

"Oh, he'll be back, Mother," Charlie said. "He only had to help a friend in Broughton."

"If he has friends in Broughton I'm a duke!" Robert shouted. "The man's stole our bureau!"

"He hasn't! He told me to stand here so I could whistle when he's looking for this place again!"

"You haven't the brains of a louse, Charlie!" Robert shouted, until his mother's hand on his shoulder silenced him. "He's only seven," she said. "How should he know when a man like that has lied?"

"We told him to stay with the cart!"

"You better stop crabbing me!" Charlie retorted.

"Enough," Anna said, and she led them back to the cottage. As they came in the front door on the ground floor, a man was climbing into the room from the courtyard.

"What are you doing here?" Anna challenged him.

"Come to piss, mum," said the man.

"You can do that elsewhere."

"As good a place as any."

"This is my cottage, and this is my floor."

"I'm urgent, mum," he said, unbuttoning his trousers.

Robert stepped forward, his foot splashing slightly on the floor. "You heard my mother."

"It's not like I'm the first," the man said. It was plain he was amused that someone as small as Robert meant to challenge him.

"The man before you was the last." Robert was afraid, but angry, too, and the anger won. But the man didn't bother getting angry, just turned his back and began urinating into the corner. Anna put her hand on Robert's shoulder. "You can't teach a pig to use a chamberpot," she said, and she led the children up the stairs.

Their bundles of clothing sat on the beds they had so laboriously carried up the stairs. There was nowhere else to set them, with no bureau; the floor was far too dirty for them to put anything there, not yet, anyway. Anna took a candle from a bag, set it in a holder, lit it. As if the candle had been a cue, rain started falling outside. Almost immediately water started dripping through the roof and ceiling, and puddling where it oozed out from behind a wall.

"It's a blessing," said Anna. "Now we needn't fetch water for the cleaning." And for the next two hours, until dark came in earnest, they washed the walls and floor of their upstairs room, and brushed the webs from the ceiling. The place was reasonably clean.

"We'll hunt up the wood tomorrow for some more shelves," Anna said. "We must spare the money to keep our goods off the floor." She was tired from the labor, bent from the discouragement, and she sat against the table, looking at the children who watched her from the beds where they sat.

"We can live here," she insisted to them.

"Aye, Mother," Robert said.

"It stinks," Charlie said, and the smell grew worse because he said so.

"Tomorrow," Anna said, "we'll clean downstairs."

"Tomorrow I'll find work," Robert said.

Anna nodded. Then she used the candle to start a coal fire in the hearth. Supper would be potatoes burnt by the fire -- they did not yet know where they could get water nearby, except the River Irk, which was filthy. Anna thought of asking the neighbor where they might find water, but she had seemed a repulsive woman, and in Anna's middle-class soul there was no room yet for the admission that she was now, however much against her will, at that woman's social level. Surely money did not make that much difference. Surely breeding and the thoughts of the heart were what made the difference between human beings and scum.

The children were asleep, Robert and Charlie in one bed, Dinah in the bed she would share with her mother, when Anna heard a sound downstairs, a snuffling sound, like an animal. Impossible for it to be anything good. Anna took the candle, opened the door, and went partway down the stairs. The sound came from the nearest corner of the room, and as her eyes got used to the dimness Anna saw that it was a man, drunken and filthy, on his hands and knees in the slime on the floor, vomiting out the night's drink and dinner. The man saw the light and looked up.

"Oh, mum, I'm sick," he said.

"Clearly," Anna answered.

"Got a bed? Got a bed for me? Man needs a bed."

"Then go home to your wife," Anna told him curtly, "but get out of here."

The man started crying and shakily stood, walking a few steps toward the stairs. "Mum, I haven't got a wife, her died, and haven't got a home, landlord outed me on my arse, take pity on me, mum." He put a foot up on the stairs.

"Get out," Anna said, beginning to be afraid.

"Not a civil way to talk to a man what's out of work through no fault of his own --"

He took another step up the stairs, and then Anna heard a noise behind her. One of the children. "Get back inside," she whispered, "nothing's wrong." She heard the door close behind her, and almost wished the child had not obeyed. A foolish wish, of course. The children were not ready to cope with a drunken man who had completely forgotten himself.

"Where's your man, mum?" asked the drunk.

"Asleep. I trust you won't require me to wake him."

"Just want a bed, mum," said the man, lurching up the stairs toward her. He reached toward her; she recoiled, retreated a step. "Got no husband, have you?"

"Yes I have. Get off my stairs."

"Don't I smell sweet to you, mum? Got shit on my boots, mum? How are such a lady living here? How did you get across this floor with your feet all pretty, did you fly?" His soiled hand touched her sleeve, caught at her fingers as she pulled away. The slime on his hand was cold and wet. She cried out faintly.

"Please go away."

"Want a bed. Raining out," the man said. "Man's got a right to sleep dry."

"I'd help you if I could, but there's no room, none at all --"

"None of that, mum. Don't mean you no harm, but --"

The vomit on his breath was strong, and weary as she was, pregnant and sensitive to smells, Anna thought she would faint. She almost stumbled as her foot sought the next step, found nothing. She was at the top of the stairs, and had no hope against such a lout, drunk as he was. She was not so much afraid of what he might do as she was afraid of the children seeing him and discovering how helpless she was now to protect them. It would terrify them. God knows it terrified her.

The door behind her opened. The man looked from her to the door as Anna half-turned to try to get the children to go back, to stay out of the way. She had no time to say anything, however. Robert rushed by her and swung the heavy iron stewpot, striking the man in the shoulder. The drunk roared, reached at Robert, who was staggering back, recovering his balance after the exertion. He didn't touch the boy, however, for at that moment Dinah shoved forward and kicked the man squarely in the crotch. He bellowed, lost his balance, tumbled backward down the stairs.

"No!" cried Anna, terrified that they had killed him. But the man immediately scrambled to his feet and fled out the door. As soon as he was gone, Anna ushered the children back into their room. "I'm relieved to see that Charlie's still asleep," Anna said. "I half expected to see him turn up next with a musket."

"Won't have nobody talk to you like that," Robert said, his voice trembling.

"Won't have anybody," Anna corrected him. "You should have let me handle it."

"I'll kill him if he comes back," Dinah said.

"No talk of killing," Anna said, violently scrubbing her hand and sleeve with a rag, trying to get rid of the slime.

"Don't be angry, Mother," Robert said. "We only meant to help."

Suddenly Anna found herself crying, not stern at all, not rebuking, but reaching out to Robert and Dinah, hugging them and saying, "Thank you, thank you."

At last they were calmed down enough to sleep. Only a few quiet words. "How did Dinah know to kick a man like that?" Robert asked.

"I don't know," Anna answered. "But I'm glad she knew."

Charlie woke a little as she covered Robert in the same bed. "I dreamed bad," he said.

"I'm sorry," Anna said. "Did you say your prayers?"

"I prayed three times and the dream went away."

"It's all better then, isn't it?"

Charlie nodded gravely, believing it. So easily, thought Anna, so easily such a little one can be given peace.

The children slept, and now Anna trembled, now she quietly crept out the door and stepped a short way down the stairs and leaned over the wobbly banister and vomited into the foul room. And when she was empty, she still retched and retched until, exhausted, she returned weakly to her bed. She was ashamed of her weakness, and tried to excuse it. It was the smell, the fear, the helplessness, the loss of her husband, most of all the shame of having fallen to such a depth as this.

"Mother."

"Hush, Dinah. Go to sleep."

"How will Father know to find us here, when he comes back?"

How could she tell the girl that her father would never come back, that he was also proud, that his shame would always keep him away? Still less could she explain that if he came, she'd shut the door in his face, treat him like the man they had driven from their stairs. I hate him, Dinah, I'll never forgive him; even if he is your father, he's the cause of all this, and I pray every night that there's a miserable room in hell for men who abandon their families. She couldn't say any of that. So she told the comforting lie: "I left word with the neighbors. He'll know the way."

Dinah nodded inscrutably; for a moment Anna had the queer feeling that her daughter knew the true answer, and had only asked the question to test her mother, to see whether Anna would trust her with the truth. But of course not, Dinah was only ten, only a child, and she missed her father after these weeks. Of course she did. God help her -- she's had to strike a man to save us, and if he had died, she would have been the one who tumbled him down the stairs. Ten years old, and she had reached willingly to cause a death, if Providence had turned it that way. What will happen to you, Dinah, you and my sons, what will happen to you when the need gets greater, and our strength grows less?

Can't be helped. All in the hands of God, can't be helped. We will pray as we have always prayed, and God will care for us, as he sees best.

Next day before breakfast she went downstairs and began sweeping the filth off the floor, including her own vomit, which was no less foul than any other. One by one the children came down to help, and it was done before their first meal at noon. "Tastes better," Robert said, holding up his cold potato, "without the smell of downstairs sauce."

Copyright © 1984 Orson Scott Card