On the other side of the room, opposite the door, was that awful Presence, which silenced even the voices of the children.
"I'm washing," the woman said, as she gave her hand to Helen.

"It is Tom's best shirt,--fer to-morrow." Helen took the hand, wrinkled and bleached with the work it had done, and stroked it gently; she did not know what to say.

This was not the grief she had thought of,--a woman working calmly at her wash-tub, while her husband lay dead in the next room.

Helen could see the tub, with the mist of steam about it, and the wash-board, and the bar of yellow soap.
She followed Mrs.Davis back to her work, and sat down on a bench, out of the way of a little stream of water which had dripped from the leaking tub, and trickled across the floor.

She asked about the children, and said she had brought some food for them; she knew it was so hard to have to think of housekeeping at such a time.
But the widow scarcely listened; she stood lifting the shirt from the water, and rubbing it gently between her hard hands, then dipping it back into the suds again.