The Harp in the South

The announcer, in milky tones, rolled out the commercial; it was all about some sort of washing powder that made laundry days a mere frolic in the backyard

Having a baby is different from all the ordinary ways of being hurt. it's worth it all. Other pain isn't worth anything, but that is.

And when he got home he started on Mumma. He hated her then, because in her fatness and untidiness and drabness she reminded him of what he himself was when he was sober.

Then she said, with piteous defiance, "If I could love her, the Good Lord could, and he won't be too hard on an old lady who didn't have an easy life.

This was the place where the Darcys lived - Plymouth Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, in an unlucky house which the landlord had renumbered from Thirteen to Twelve-and-a-Half.