Christian looked at her in some wonder. Mrs. Carter did not even blush.
"Why, now," she said, "the way poor women are misunderstood! You fastened your door, timorous young things, supposing as the neighbors might be breaking into your room and getting your bits of gold. You had no cause to fear that with me a-sleeping on the same floor; you had but to shout to me and I'd have come to you, and there aint a neighbor in the house as would do anything to little gels when Martha Carter's blood is up. Well, you shut your door, but I couldn't sleep. I said to Willyum, 'Willyum,' I sez, 'I can't get any rest for thinking of those two poor little haristocrats next door. They don't trust us, Willyum,' sez I, 'and I'll open the winder and steal out on the leads and look in at 'em, just to see that they're cozy and fast asleep.'
"'Do,' sez Willyum; and I gets out, and, my word! I was took back. You turned into a young savage, miss, and you threatened to murder me, and I as good-natured a woman as ever walked.
"Back I goes to Willyum. 'They're young sparrer-haws,' sez I, 'and we'll leave 'em to 'emselves. I'll have no more dealing with 'em. I never was took up with haristocrats, and these are the worst of their species.'
"Willyum agrees with me, and we drop asleep. Well, miss, I meant no harm; you mistook me—that was all."
Christian's clear eyes fixed themselves steadily on Mrs. Carter's bad face; then she said in a gentle tone:
"We are going away. We don't like this house, and we are going. You can do what you like with the crockery and the frying-pan and the coals, and you can have that half-crown in order to get the broken chair mended. And I paid for this room for a week, and you can use it until the week is up. Good-by; we are going. Don't keep us. If you or your husband follow us I shall scream for the police, and I shall tell the whole truth about everything. You'd best not follow us. Come, Rose."
She took her little companion's hand, and they ran downstairs.
As they ran the neighbors on each floor peeped out to watch them, and one or two made as though to follow them; but somehow they stopped short, for there was an expression on Christian's face which seemed to daunt them. She was walking very upright, and there was not a scrap of fear about her. Rosy, who stepped by her side, looked altogether small and insignificant by comparison.
"My word!" said Mrs. Carter, who came downstairs behind the children, turning as she spoke to address a slatternly woman who had come out of her room to see the sport, as she expressed it—"my word! that eldest girl, she'll do what she said. She's a character, she be. Why, if you'll believe it, last night, when I stood by the winder as kind as kind can be, just to see if the pore little dears were sleeping sound, she threatened to murder me, she did—no less. They're a good riddance, they be, and I'm going to see the landlord about that bit of a room. Pore man, I don't think he'll ever see his rent."