"I have not been reading any book," said Matilda.

"Then lie down and quit talking. How do you expect I am going to sleep?"

"Let us go and see what we can do at the Dows, Maria, to-morrow, won't you?"

But Maria either did not or would not hear; so the matter pa.s.sed for that night. But the next day Matilda brought it up again. Maria found excuses to put her off. Matilda, however, was not to be put off permanently; she never forgot; and day after day the subject came up for discussion, until Maria at last consented.

"I am going because you tease me so, Tilly," she said, as they set forth from the gate. "Just for that and nothing else. I don't like it a bit."

"But you promised."

"I didn't."

"To bring in new scholars?"

"I did not promise I would bring the Dow children; and I don't believe they'll come."

The walk before the children was not long, and yet it almost took them out of the village. They pa.s.sed the corner this time without turning, keeping the road, which was indeed part of the great high road which took Shadywalk in its way, as it took many another village. The houses in this direction soon began to scatter further apart from each other.

They were houses of more pretension, too, with grounds and gardens and fruit trees about them; and built in styles that were notable, if not according to any particular rule. Soon the ground began to descend sharply towards the bed of a brook, which brawled along with impetuous waters towards a mill somewhere out of sight. It was a full, fine stream, mimicking the rapids and eddies of larger streams, with all their life and fury given to its smaller current. The waters looked black and wintry in contrast with the white snow of the sh.o.r.es. A foot-bridge spanned the brook, alongside of another bridge for carriages; and just beyond, the black walls of a ruin showed where another fine mill had once stood. That mill had been burnt. It was an old story; the girls did not so much as think about it now. Matilda's glance had gone the other way, where the stream rushed along from under the bridge and hurried down a winding glen, bordered by a road that seemed well traversed. A house could be seen down the glen, just where the road turned in company with the brook and was lost to view.

"I wonder who lives down there?" said Matilda.

"I don't know. Yes, I do, too; but I have forgotten."

"I wonder if they come to church."

"I don't know _that;_ and I shall not go to ask them. Why, Matilda, you never cared before whether people went to church."

"Don't you care now?" was Matilda's rejoinder.

"No! I don't care. I don't know those people. They may go to fifty churches, for aught I can tell."

"But, Maria,"--said her little sister.

"What?"

"I do not understand you."

"Very likely. _That_ isn't strange."

"But, Maria,--you promised the other night--O Maria, what things you promised!"

"What then?" said Maria. "What do you mean? What did I promise?"

"You promised you would be a servant of Christ," Matilda said, anxiously.

"Well, what if I did?" said Maria. "Of course I did; what then. Am I to find out whether everybody in Shadywalk goes to church, because I promised that? It is not my business."

"Whose business is it?"

"It is Mr. Richmond's business and Mr. Everett's business; and Mr.

Schonflocker's business. I don't see what makes it mine."

"Then you ought not to have said that you would bring new scholars to the school, I think, if you did not mean to do it; and whom do you mean to carry the message to, Maria? You said you would carry the message."

"I don't know what carrying the message means," said Maria.

Matilda let the question drop, and they went on their way in silence; rising now by another steep ascent on the other side of the brook, having crossed the bridge. The hill was steep enough to give their lungs play without talking. At the top of the hill the road forked; one branch turned off southwards; the high road turned east; the sisters followed this. A little way further, and both slackened their 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 pa.s.ser-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?

what 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; sc.r.a.ps of dinner on the floor; sc.r.a.ps 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."