Page "romance" Paragraph 65

The Abernathy furnace consumed fuel like a giant ravenous maw that had to be appeased by hurling tons of coal into its evil red depths, and no matter how much coal they put in the house remained cold.

Cold came in the innumerable cracks that seemed to have sprung up, under doors, around loosened window frames, from the sleeping porches, the attic, from the widened cracks between shingles on the roof.

Presently they had to give up running the furnace at full capacity and depend on the old coal range in the kitchen, which had never been removed when the new gas range was installed, and the fireplaces and an electric heater in Grandma's room.

It was so cold and so wretched that a sort of desperate gaiety infected all of them, like people stormbound or shipwrecked or caught in some other freak of circumstance so that time stood still and minor anxieties fell away and the only important thing was to cling together and survive.