Perhaps I have been at work for half an hour when I hear movements overhead.

One or other of them is wondering why the house is so quiet.

I rattle the tongs, but even this does not satisfy them, so back into the desk go my papers, and now what you hear is not the scrape of a pen but the rinsing of pots and pans, or I am making beds, and making them thoroughly, because after I am gone my mother will come (I know her) and look suspiciously beneath the coverlet.
The kitchen is now speckless, not an unwashed platter in sight, unless you look beneath the table.

I feel that I have earned time for an hour's writing at last, and at it I go with vigour.

One page, two pages, really I am making progress, when--was that a door opening?
But I have my mother's light step on the brain, so I 'yoke' again, and next moment she is beside me.