Glacier County chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1931-1940, 1940-08-09

The air within the house was dank
and chilly, yet some degrees warm
er than that Of the streets. 1t was
thick and fetid with the smells OF
unaired living quarters, defective
plumbing, dust, human beings, and
every sort Of cooking and cleaning.
Boiling cabbage, stove ashes, coal
smoke, hot laundry suds, broiling
meat, frying eggs, all united with a
thousand other domestic scents to
give it color; drawn like a red
thread through the web of odors
was that of carbolic acid.
"It's good to get homel" Sheila
said, mounting.
isn't it," Cecilia agreed. "You
think you'll never make it."
Come up and have dinner with
US, Cecil"
II can't. Mammals alone. And I
think it's the anniversary Of my
aunt's death or something. Any
way, she was crying at breakfast"
Cecilia stopped on the second
floor. Sheila mounted on to the
fourth, as high as she could 60.
Mary Carscadden, now cooking
dinner, had, in defiance of all the
cries of housing, budgeting, and the
bearing of young, brought seven
children into the world in these
three dark rooms and had raised five
of them. How it had been done,
how she had weathered widowhood,
the children's illnesses, poverty,
cold, ignorance; from whence their
thousand meals apiece per annum
had come, she knew as little as the
mice that hid behind her woodbox,
or the dirty doves that came to her
sooty fire-escape for crumbs every
morning. Her anxieties had rarely
gone ahead farther than the next
meal, the next months twenty-seven
and a half dollars for rent.
During the war the rent had
jumped to forty-two dollars, and Joe
and Marg'ret, mere children, had
gone stanchly to work to help Man,
ma. But now the rent was lower
than it had ever been, and Marg'-
ret and the second son, Nicely, were
!, =, ,.r
ooln iiia MI anu s ,ilies w WEI" III.
iei ei,t. iHe D.oau, nusiieu iaS , tiia'
e MaS tuite9 "i'ii sle " "e'o nc
oleiia naa mo Minihies III IT, 'iie
'ee,h were sun wiiite -. ..,,
Its terrible nlght' isn't III!
she said.
awful Sheila agreed. Her
mother MADE the tut-tutting SOUND
that was her contribution 10 every
coiVerSa'ioh' soon OF late. Shee[-
!ul ana oraVe, she YET iouno rlucil
IN me 10 oepiore. one turned oack
10 tfie Stove.
A black-halred young man was
buried IN a newspaper at the table,
Shella's brother Joe. She addressed
MIN:
aren't you nome early, Joe?
Her mother caught her attention
by waving hand, signaled silence.
Leave him bel" her lips said
soundlessly. Sheila raised her dark
eyebrows.
With no further word, but with an
deliberately bewildered expression,
she went into the middle room, add
ed her hat and coat to the general
congestion there, and returned to
the kitchen, moving her tired fore
head and her silky hair with ten
firmly pressed fingers. She sank into
a chair at the table.
Come on, Joel" Sheila said sud-
denly; lets eat!"
Her sister Angela, seventeen and
delicate, came limping in lust be.
fore they began, and smiled at Shei.
la as she slipped into her chair.
Angela had been "posthumious''
child, according to her mother. she
had been born in the very center Of
the infantile paralysis panic, war
clouds had gathered about her ia.
therless little downy head. But An.