I rose
angrily from the fire, and went to the door, intending
to close it with a bang.
But when I reached it, I saw something, between door and
jamb, which stayed my hand. The door led to a shed in
which the housewife washed pots and the like. I felt
some surprise, therefore, when I found a light there at
this time of night; still more surprise when I saw what
she was doing.
She was seated on the mud floor, with a rush-light
before her, and on either side of her a high-piled heap
of refuse and rubbish. From one of these, at the moment
I caught sight of her, she was sorting things--horrible
filthy sweepings of road or floor--to the other; shaking
and sifting each article as she passed it across, and
then taking up another and repeating the action with it,
and so on--all minutely, warily, with an air of so much
patience and persistence that I stood wondering. Some
things--rags--she held up between her eyes and the
light, some she passed through her fingers, some she
fairly tore in pieces. And all the time her husband
stood watching her greedily, my platter still in his
hand, as if her strange occupation fascinated him.
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