eir steps
involuntarily as the house they were going to came full in view.

It was like a great many others; brown with the weather, and having a
certain forlorn look that a house gets when there are no loving eyes
within it to care how it looks. The doors did not hang straight; the
windows had broken panes; a tub here and a broken pitcher there stood
in sight of every passer-by. A thin wreath of smoke curled up from the
chimney, so it was certain that people lived there; but nothing else
looked like it. The girls went in through the rickety gate. Over the
house the bare branches of a cherry tree gave no promise of summery
bloom; and some tufts of brown stems standing up from the snow hardly
suggested the gay hollyhocks of the last season. The two girls
slackened their steps yet more, and seemed not to know very well how to
go on.

"I don't like it, Tilly," Maria said. "I have a mind to give it up."

"Oh, I wouldn't, Maria," the little one replied; but she looked puzzled
and doubtful.

"Well, suppose they don't want to see us in here? it don't look as if
they did."

"We can try, Maria; it will do no harm to try."

"I don't know that," said Maria. "I'll never come such an errand again,
Matilda; never! I give you notice of that. What shall I do? Knock?"

"I suppose so."

Maria knocked. The next minute the upper half of the door was opened,
and an oldish woman looked out. A dirty woman, with her hair all in
fly-away order, and her dress very slatternly as well as soiled.

"What do you want?"

"Are there some children here?" Maria began.

"Children? yes, there's children here. There's my children."

"Do they go to school?"

"Has somebody been stealin' something, and you want to know if it's my
children have done it?" said the woman. "'Cos they don't go to no
school that _you_ ever see."

"I did not mean any such thing," said Maria, quite taken aback.

"Well, what _did_ you mean?" the woman asked sharply.

"We want to see the children," Matilda put in. "May we come in and get
warm, if you please?"

The woman still held the door in her hand, and looked at the last
speaker from head to foot; then half reluctantly opened the door.

"I don't know as it'll hurt you to come in," she said; "but it won't do
you much good; the place is all in a clutter, and it always is. Come
along in, if you want to! and shut the door; 'tain't so warm here
you'll need the wind in to help you. Want the children, did you say?
w