hat do you want of 'em?"

Matilda thought privately that the wind would have been a good
companion after all; no sooner was the door shut, than all remembrance
of fresh air faded away. An inexpressible atmosphere filled the house,
in which frying fat, smoke, soapsuds, and the odour of old garments,
mingled and combined in proportions known to none but such
dwelling-places. Yet it was not as bad as it might have been, by many
degrees; the house was a little frame house, open at the joints; and it
stood in the midst of heaven's free air; all the winds that came from
the mountains and the river swept over and around it, came down the
chimney sometimes, and breathed blessed breaths through every opening
door and shackling window-frame. But to Matilda it seemed as bad as
could be. So it seemed to her eyes too. Nothing clean; nothing
comfortable; nothing in order; scraps of dinner on the floor; scraps of
work under the table; a dirty cat in the corner by the stove; a wash
tub occupying the other corner. The woman had her sleeves rolled up,
and now plunged her arms into the tub again.

"You can put in a stick of wood, if you want to," she said; "I guess
the fire's got down. What did you come here for, hey? I hain't heard
that yet, and I'm in a takin' to find out."

"We thought maybe your children might like to go to Sunday-School,"
said Maria, with a great deal of trepidation; "and we just came to ask
them. That's all."

"How did ye know but they went already?" the woman asked, looking at
Maria from the corner of her eye.

"I didn't know. I just came to ask them."

"Well, I just advise you not to mix yourself with people's affairs till
you _do_ know a little about 'em. What business is it o' yourn, eh,
whether my children goes to Sunday-School? Sunday-School! what a poke
it is!"

"They did not come to _our_ Sunday-School," said Matilda, for her
sister was nonplussed; "and we would like to have them come; unless
they were going somewhere else."

"They may speak for themselves," said Mrs. Dow; and she opened an inner
door, and called in a shrill
voice--"Araminty!--Jemimy!--Alexander!--come right along down, and if
ye don't I'll whip ye."

She went back to her washing-tub, and Maria and Matilda looked to see
three depressed specimens of young human life appear at that inner
door; but first tumbled down and burst in a sturdy, rugged young rascal
of some eight or nine years; and after him a girl a little older, with
th