hey reached Leicester Place. The little lamp-lighter ran down
out of the court with his ladder as they turned in. There were two
bright lanterns whose flames flared in the wind; one just opposite
their windows, and one below at the livery stable. There was a big
livery stable at the bottom of the court, built right across the
end; and there was litter about the doors, and horse odor in the
air. But that is not the very worst kind of city smell that might
be, and putting up with that, the people who lived in Leicester
Court had great counterbalancing advantages. There was only one side
to the place; and though the street way was very narrow, the
opposite walls shut in the grounds of a public building, where there
were trees and grass, and above which there was really a chance at
the sky. Further along, at the corner, loomed the eight stories of
an apartment hotel. All up and down this great structure, and up and
down the little three-storied fronts of the Court as well, the whole
place was gay with illumination, for these last were nearly all
lodging houses, and at night at least, looked brilliant and grand;
certainly to Bel Bree's eyes, seeing three-storied houses and
gas-lights for the first time. Inside, at number eight, the one
little gas jet revealed presently just what Aunt Blin had told
about: the scarlet and black three-ply carpet in a really handsome
pattern of raised leaves; the round table in the middle with a red
cloth, and the square one in the corner with a brown linen one; the
little Parlor Beauty stove, with a boiler atop and an oven in the
side,--an oval braided mat before it, and a mantel shelf above with
some vases and books upon it,--all the books, some dozen in number,
that Aunt Blin had ever owned in the whole course of her life. One
of the blue vases had a piece broken out of its edge, but that was
turned round behind. The closets, one on each side of the
fire-place, answered for pantry, china closet, store-room, wardrobe,
and all. The _refrigerator_ was out on the stone window-sill on the
east side. The room had corner windows, the house standing at the
head of a little paved alley that ran down to Hero Street.

"There!" says Aunt Blin turning up the gas cheerily, and dropping
her shawl upon a chair. "Now I'll go and get Bartholomew, and then
I'll run for some muffins, and you can make a fire. You know where
all the things are, you know!"

That was the way she made Bel welcome; treating her at o