"You don't say so!" cried Mrs. Rowles, unable to keep longer silence. "Why, with us there are laundresses that keep servants! and many little places for girls—minding babies and such like."
"Ah, in the country," said Miss Sutton; "I daresay. Oh, this dreadful, ravenous London; it eats up men, women, and children! Well, I must go on to another house. Good-bye, good-bye."
As the lady went away Mrs. Rowles asked, "Where does she come from?"
"She lives in a street near Hyde Park. She and many other ladies, and gentlemen too, have districts in the East-end, because there are no ladies and gentlemen here who could be district visitors; there are only poor people here."
Emma Rowles thought deeply for a few minutes, while Mary Mitchell stitched away.
Thomas Mitchell had raised himself up, and was saying, "I shall soon be much better. I feel I am going to be strong again. Emma Rowles has given me quite a turn."
"Don't say that, Tom; it is rude," whispered his wife.
"I mean a turn for the better, a turn for the better."
"I wish, oh, I wish," Mrs. Rowles burst out, "how I wish I could turn you all out into the country! Fresh air, fresh water, room to move about! Where the rain makes the trees clean, instead of making the streets dirty, like it does here. Though we have mud up to your eyes in the country too; but then it is sweet, wholesome mud. Ah! what is that?"
A noise of confused voices rose from the street, and Mrs. Mitchell ran to the window. But these attics were not the whole size of the house, and the window was set so far back that she could not see the pavement on her own side of the street.