"Well, it isn't far off. One of the regular old tumble-down streets, given up long ago to cobblers and tinkers of all kinds, and you're going to take tea with a girl who lives in that frowsy, dirty place!"
"It isn't frowsy and dirty. It's only an old, unfashionable street, but not frowsy or dirty. It's quite clean and quiet, and has shade-trees and little grass plots to some of the houses. Why, it used to be the court end of the town years ago."
"So was North Bennet Street, and all the rest of the North End; and now it's turned over to the rag-tag of creation,—Russian Jews, and every other kind of a foreigner,—and look here!" suddenly interrupting herself, as a new idea struck her, "I'll bet you anything that this Esther Bodn is a foreigner,—an emigrant herself of some sort."
"Kitty!"
"Yes, I'll bet you a pair of gloves,—eight-buttoned ones,—and I don't believe her name is spelled at all like our Bowdoin Street. I believe they—her mother and she—spell it that way to suit themselves. I believe it's just Bodn; and that is an outlandish foreign name, if I—"
"Kitty, I think it's positively wicked for you to talk like this,—it's slander."
Kitty laughed, and, wagging her head to and fro, sang in a merry little undertone,—
"Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is a thief
Flaunting as a Yankee man; that's my belief."
Laura couldn't help joining in this laugh, Kitty was so droll; but the laugh died out in the next breath, as she said,—
"Now, Kitty, don't go and talk like this to the other girls; don't—"