CHAPTER III.
HOW POLLY SPENT HER MONEY.
The first two or three flights of stairs were thickly strewn with mud and dust from the feet of the different lodgers; but when Pollie reached the last landing she felt it was home indeed. The stairs were as clean and white as hands could scrub them—no dirt was to be seen here,—and outside her mother's door was a little mat on which to rub the shoes before entering. It was quite a relief to reach this part of the house.
There were only two rooms at the top part of the tenement—one inhabited by good Mrs Flanagan, the other by Pollie and her mother; and though the apartments were small, and the narrow windows overlooked the chimney-pots and tiles, yet they felt it such an advantage to be up here, removed, as it were, from the noisy people who lived in the same dwelling; each room, in fact, was let out to separate families, some of them very rough and boisterous.
Pollie tapped at her mother's door, and then peeped merrily in. There sat that good and gentle woman, busily working close by the narrow window, so as to get as much light as possible for her delicate needlework.
The tea-things were already on the table, which was spread with a clean white cloth, and the kettle sang a cheery welcome to little Pollie; for though it was only three o'clock, it was tea-time for them, since dinner was an almost unknown luxury to this poor mother and child.
"Here I am, mother dear!" she cried, putting in her bright face, which was as sunshine to the lonely widow's heart.
"O Pollie, I am so glad you have come home; I was getting so anxious and afraid, and the time seemed so long without you, my child."