“They’re a bit untidy,” she said sullenly. “I ain’t had no time to clean ’em up. There ain’t no one to take them for a walk to-day.”
“Oh, never mind how untidy they are,” said Norah hastily. “Do send them in.”
“Oh, all right,” said the girl. “You’ll tell the missus it was you arsked for ’em, won’t yer?”
“Yes, of course.”
She went out, and the Lintons looked at each other, and then at the hopeless little room. The furniture was black horsehair, very shiny and hard and slippery; there was a gimcrack bamboo overmantel, with much speckled glass, and the pictures were of the kind peculiar to London lodging-houses, apt to promote indigestion in the beholder. There was one little window, looking out upon a blank courtyard and a dirty little side-street, where children played and fought incessantly, and stray curs nosed the rubbish in the gutters in the hope of finding food. There was nothing green to be seen, nothing clean, nothing pleasant.
“Oh, poor kiddies!” said Norah, under her breath.
The door opened and they came in; not shyly—the London child is seldom shy—but frankly curious, and in the case of the elder two, with suspicion. Three white-faced mites, as children well may be who have spent a London summer in a Bloomsbury square, where the very pavements sweat tar, and the breathless, sticky heat is as cruel by night as by day. A boy of six, straight and well-grown, with dark hair and eyes, who held by the hand a small toddling person with damp rings of golden hair: behind them a slender little girl, a little too shadowy for a mother’s heart to be easy; with big brown eyes peeping elfishly from a cloud of brown curls.
The boy spoke sullenly.
“Eva told us to come in,” he said.
“We wanted you to take care of us,” said Norah. “You see, your mother isn’t here.”