The Merry-go-round

The downstairs front room of a moderate-sized cottage. There is a
wide fireplace, with a heaped-up ashy fire. The parlour is used as
a bedroom, and contains a heavy old-fashioned mahogany dressing-
table, a washstand, and a bedstead whose canopy is missing, so that
the handsome posts stand like ruined columns. The room is in an
untidy, neglected condition, medicine bottles and sickroom
paraphernalia littered about. In the bed, a woman between sixty
and seventy, with a large-boned face, and a long ...