Jack London 
The Valley of the Moon 
Jack LONDON Novels

The Al Vista band’ll be along, an’ you know it plays heavenly. An’ you just love dancin’—-‘

Twenty feet away, a stout, elderly woman interrupted the girl’s persuasions. The elderly woman’s back was turned, and the back–loose, bulging, and misshapen—began a convulsive heaving.

‘Gawd!’ she cried out. ‘O Gawd!’

She flung wild glances, like those of an entrapped animal, up and down the big whitewashed room that panted with heat and that was thickly humid with the steam that sizzled from the damp cloth under the irons of the many ironers.