Monteagle by Pansy

MR. WEST and his daughter were at breakfast. At least they were sitting before a small square table that held part of a loaf of baker's bread, and a saucer in which floated a sickly yellowish mass named butter, for which only the flies seemed to have a relish; and they, poor creatures, paid for their appetites by their lives. Dilly was constantly engaged in fishing out victim after victim who seemed determined to sacrifice himself in the oily flood.

The little room in which the table was set, had but one window, and that an eastern, and the morning sun had a fierce spite against it, apparently, for he flashed in, even at this comparatively early hour, red and angry, revealing dust and cobwebs, and the bodies of dead moths, and bugs, of every shape and size. The floor was bare and soiled; the three chairs were sadly worn; the low mantel was decorated as the mantels of such rooms are wont to be, with scraps of paper, little bundles of left-over things for which there was no place, a bunch of dried wild flowers, which Dilly had saved because they were once so pretty, and because she hardly ever had any flowers, and could not bear to throw them away; besides which, there were a fork, a spoon, and a soiled cup, left over from yesterday's effort at cooking; and around this spoon, and fork, and cup, the flies had gathered in such masses that they were simply black humps rising out of the surrounding dust.