d I working as hard as I
can in the kitchen! I won't stand this, I can tell you."

"Playing!" echoed Matilda. "Well, Maria, what do you want done?"

"Look and see. You have eyes. About everything is to be done. There's
the castors to put in order, and the lettuce to get ready--I wish
lettuce wouldn't grow!--and the table to set, and the sauce to make for
the pudding. Now hurry."

It was absolutely better than play, to fly about and do all these
things, after the confinement of darning stockings. Matilda's glee
equalled Maria's discomfiture. Only, when it was all done and the
dinner ready, Matilda stood still to think. "I am sorry I was so
impatient this morning up-stairs," she said to herself.

CHAPTER II.

Matilda's spirits were not quite used up by the morning's experience,
for after dinner she put on her bonnet, and took her Bible, and set off
on an expedition, with out asking leave of anybody. She was bent upon
getting to Lilac Lane. "If I do not get there to-day, I don't know when
I shall," she said to herself. "There is no telling what Aunt Candy
will do."

She got there without any difficulty. It was an overcast, Aprilish day,
with low clouds, and now and then a drop of rain falling. Matilda did
not care for that. It was all the pleasanter walking. Lilac Lane was at
some distance from home, and the sun had a good deal of power on sunny
days now. The mud was all gone by this time; in its place a thick
groundwork of dust. Winter frost was replaced by soft spring air; but
that gave a chance for the lane odours to come out--not the fragrance
of hawthorn and primrose, by any means. Nor any such pleasant sight to
be seen. Poor, straggling, forlorn houses; broken fences, or no
courtyards at all; thick dust, and no footway; garbage, and ashes, and
bones, but never even so much as a green potato patch to greet the eye,
much less a rose or a pink; an iron shop, and a livery stable at the
entrance of the lane, seeming dignified and elegant buildings by
comparison with what came afterwards. Few living things were abroad; a
boy or two, and two or three babies making discomposure in the dust,
were about all. Matilda wondered if every one of those houses did not
need to have the message carried to them? Where was she to begin?

"Does Mrs. Eldridge live in this house, or in that?" Matilda asked a
boy in her way.

"In nary one."

"Where _does_ she live?"

"Old Sally Eldridge? Sam's grandmother?"

"I don't k