Behind this unequal strife the Triplets held their court, in a cradle by the fire, canopied with coarse flannel, and rocked unceasingly, one would say maddeningly, by a female relative with an expression of pomp befitting the show-woman. It suggested the bellringer who said, "We preached a very fine sermon to-day." The wicker walls rolled creakily. The rockers were uneven, so was the earthen floor beneath them, and each oscillation contained three separate jerks. In this bewildering world, composed of sallow blankets and an unceasing earthquake, the three brand new souls reposed as best they might; the show-woman's grimy hand parted their firmament of flannel, and revealed three minute faces of the pallor of lard, dome-like in forehead, with tiny and precisely similar features, wonderfully absorbed in sleep. The infant of a day old appeals unfailingly to the compassion, but its most impassioned adherent must admit that it is out of drawing. The light from the open door struck suddenly into the cradle, as some one clove a path through the assemblage; one of the absorbed faces worked in vexation, elderly, miserable vexation. Tears, too, angry and pitiful; the long slit of opening eyelid was full of them, the unseeing disc of dull blue within swam in them, the stately bald head turned to terra-cotta.
[Illustration: "SHE'S THE LIVELIEST OF THEM, GOD BLESS HER!"]
"She's the liveliest of them, God bless her!" said the show-woman, in high admiration, "but as for the little one-een next the fire, she'll never do a day's good. 'Twasn't hardly making day this morning when I had a pot of water on the fire for her."
Being interpreted, this meant that the little one-een by the fire had in the cold autumn dawn retraced her way so far into the white trance of the unknown that all was made ready for washing and laying her out. She lay like a doll made of pale puckered wax, her sleeping lids had a lavender tone, and the shadows about her mouth were grey. Next morning the cocks had crowed but once when the pot of water simmered again over the turf fire, and the weak and lonely combat with death ended in defeat.
The life that she was not to share moved on about her in leisurely squalor; the smoke from the turf fire strayed languidly up the sooty wall, and blundered against the broad mouth of the chimney till the rafters were lost in the blue and settled obscurity. The walls were yellow with smoke; it was easy to imagine its flavour in the bowl of milk that stood on the dresser, ready for the invalid in the inner room. Obscure corners harboured obscure masses that might be family raiment, or beds, or old women; somewhere among them the jubilant cry of a hen proclaimed the feat of laying an egg, in muffled tones that suggested a lurking-place under a bed. Between the cradle and the fire sat an old man in a prehistoric tall hat, motionless in the stupor of his great age; at his feet a boy wrangled with a woolly puppy that rolled its eyes till the blue whites showed, in a delicious glance of humour, as it tugged at the red flannel shirt of its playmate.