A Collier's Friday Night

The kitchen or living-room of a working-man's house. At the back
the fireplace, with a large fire burning. On the left, on the oven
side of the stove, a WOMAN of some fifty-five years sits in a
wooden rocking-chair, reading. Behind her and above her, in the
recess made by the fireplace, four shelves of books, the shelf-
covers being of green serge, with woollen ball fringe, and the
books being ill-assorted school books, with an edition of Lessing,
florid in green and gilt, but tarnished. On the le...