No, this was all, all there was of it: just these two miserable little poky rooms! She raised her head and looked round, and the tears welled up in spite of herself.

The roof was so low that you could almost touch it; the window was no larger than a pocket-handkerchief; there were chinks between the slabs of the walls.
And from one of these she now saw a spider crawl out, a huge black tarantula, with horrible hairy legs.

Polly was afraid of spiders; and at this the tears began to overflow and to trickle down her cheeks.
Holding her skirts to her--the new dress she had made with such pride, now damp, and crushed, and soiled--she sat down and put her feet, in their soaked, mud-caked, little prunella boots, on the rung of her chair, for fear of other monsters that might be crawling the floor.
And then, while she sat thus hunched together, the voices outside were suddenly drowned in a deafening noise--in a hideous, stupefying din, that nearly split one's eardrums: it sounded as though all the tins and cans in the town were being beaten and banged before the door.

Polly forgot the tarantula, forgot her bitter disappointment with her new home.

Her black eyes wide with fear, her heart thudding in her chest, she sprang to her feet and stood ready, if need be, to defend herself.
Where, oh where was Richard?
It was the last straw.