'Everything! Seeing all those people and hearing people talk Yorkshire,' cried Horatia.
'The people are just like poor people anywhere, only rather dirtier; and I don't like their way of speaking—they have such rough, loud voices,' replied Sarah.
'I think that kind of sing-song they have is musical, and they are not a bit like our villagers; I don't know how, but they are not,' said Horatia, glancing about her, and almost jumping up and down in her eagerness to see all there was to be seen, as they drove slowly along the narrow, and at this time crowded, streets of the grimy manufacturing town.
'Oh, oh, look, Nanny, at that lovely river all purple!' she cried enthusiastically.
'Well, really, Miss Horatia, I can't say that I do admire that. It looks shocking dirty,' said the maid.
'It is. It's lovely before it gets to Ousebank; but it's so polluted by the mills turning all their horrid dyes and things into it that fish can't live in it,' observed Sarah in tones of disgust.
'Well, I call it a lovely colour. Just think how delightful—when you get tired of a dress one colour, you have just got to dip it into the river when the water's the colour you want, and, hey, presto! there you are with a new dress!'
Even the chauffeur on the seat in front let his face relax into a smile at Horatia's chatter; but Sarah, though she laughed, said decidedly, 'I'd rather send my dresses to proper dyers than put them into that dirty water; and I'd rather see the river clean, and so would you if you lived here.'
They had got clear of the town now, and Horatia, having nothing to look at except an ugly row of cottages, in which even she could not find anything to admire, turned her attention to the car, which she declared most luxurious, and ever so much better than her father's.
'We can go out in it as much as you like, if you like motoring, and go for picnics in the country,' suggested Sarah.