I couldn't look up yet.
Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again.

She was right about the rats.

You'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while.

She said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace.

She showed me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't know whether she could throw true now.