Alison was sitting on a bandbox.  She had generally been sitting on a bandbox for three weeks,—­or on a bushel-basket, or a cupboard shelf, or a pile of old newspapers, or the baby’s bath-tub.  On one occasion it was the baby himself.  She mistook him for the rag-bag.

If ever we had to move again,—­which all the beneficence of the Penates forbid!—­my wife should be locked into the parlor, and a cargo of Irishwomen turned loose about the premises to “attend to things.”  What it is that women find to do with themselves in this world I have never yet discovered.  They are always “attending to things.”  Whatever that may mean, I have long ago received it as the only solution at my command of their superfluous wear and tear, and worry and flurry, and tears and nerves and headaches.  A fellow may suggest Jane, and obtrude Bridget, and hire Peggy, and run in debt for Mehetable, and offer to take the baby on ’Change with him, but has he by a feather’s weight lightened Madam’s mysterious burden?  My dear sir, don’t presume to expect it.  She has just as much to do as she ever had.  In fact, she has a little more.  “Strange, you don’t appreciate it!  Follow her about one day, and see for yourself!”

What I started to say, however, was that I thought it over often,—­I mean about that invoice of Irishwomen,—­coming home from the office at night, while we were moving out of Artichoke Street into Nemo’s Avenue.  It is not pleasant to find one’s wife always sitting on a bandbox.  I have seen her crawl to her feet when she heard me coming, and hold on by a chair, and try her poor little best to look as if she could stand twenty-four hours longer; she so disliked that I should find a “used-up looking house” under any circumstances.  But I believe that was worse than the bandbox.

On this particular night she was too tired even to crawl.  I found her all in a heap in the corner, two dusters and a wash-cloth in one blue-veined hand, and a broom in the other; an old corn-colored silk handkerchief knotted over her hair,—­her hair is black, and the effect was good,—­and her little brown calico apron-string literally tied to the baby, who was shrieking at the end of his tether because he could just not reach the kitten and throw her into the fire.  On Alison’s lap, between a pile of shirts and two piles of magazines, lay a freshly opened letter.  I noticed that she put it into her pocket before she dropped her dusters and stood up to lift her face for my kiss.  She forgot about the apron-strings, and the baby tipped up the wrong way, and hung dangling in mid-air.

After we had taken tea,—­that is to say, after we had drawn around the ironing-board put on two chairs in the front entry, made the cocoa in a tin dipper, stirred it with a fork, and cut the bread with a jack-knife,—­after the baby was fairly off to bed in a champagne-basket, and Tip disposed of, his mother only knew where, we coaxed a consumptive fire into the parlor grate, and sat down before it in the carpetless, pictureless, curtainless, blank, bare, soapy room.