Opportunities? were all her opportunities gone from her at once? That could not be; and yet Matilda did not see her way out of the question.
So the carriage rolled along with her, and she by and by got tired of thinking and began to examine more carefully into what there was to see. She was coming into a quarter of the city unlike those where she had been before. The house of Mme. Fournissons was in a very quiet street certainly; but what she was passing now was far below that in pretension. These streets were very uncomfortable, she thought, even to ride through. Yet the houses themselves were as good and as large as many houses in Shadywalk. But nothing in Shadywalk, no, not Lilac lane itself, was so repelling. Nothing in Shadywalk was so dingy and dark. Lilac lane was dirty, and poor; yet it was broad enough and the cottages stood far enough apart to let the sky look in. Here, in these streets, houses and people seemed to be packed. There was a bare look of want; a forlorn abandonment of every sort of pleasantness; what must it be to go in at one of those doors? Matilda thought; and to live there?—the idea was too disagreeable to dwell upon. Yet people lived there. What sort? Dingy people, as far as Matilda could see; dirty people, and as hopeless looking as the houses. It was not however a region of the wretchedly poor through which her course lay; the windows were whole and the roofs were decent; but it made the little girl's heart sick to look at it all, and read the signs she could not read. Through street after street of this general character the carriage went; narrow streets, very full of mud and dirt; where the horses stepped round an overturned basket of garbage in one place, and in another stopped for a dray to get out of their path; where children looked as if their heads were never brushed, and often the women looked as if their clothes were never clean. Matilda could never walk to see her sisters, that was plain; she was glad nobody was in the carriage with her; and she was much disappointed to see even a part of New York look like this.
In a street a little wider, a little cleaner, a shade or two more respectable, the carriage stopped at last. It stopped, and Matilda got out. Was this Bolivar street? But she looked and saw that 316 was the number of the house. So she rang the bell.
It was the right place; and she was shewn into a parlour, where she had to wait a little. It was respectable, and yet it oppressed all Matilda's senses. The room was full of buckwheat cake smoke, to begin with, which had filled it that morning and probably every morning of the week, and was never encouraged, nor indeed had ever a chance, to pass away. So each morning made its addition to the stock, till now Matilda felt as if it could be almost seen as well as felt. It certainly was in the carpet, the dingy old brown carpet, in which the worn holes were too many and too evident to be hidden by rug or crumb cloth or concealed by disposition of furniture. It wreathed the lamps on the mantelpiece and the picture on the wall, which last represented a very white monument with a very green willow tree drooping limp tresses over it, and a lady in black pressing a white handkerchief to her eyes. An old mahogany chest of drawers and a table with some books on it did not help the effect; for the chest of drawers was out of place, the cotton table cover was dingy and hung awry, and the books were soiled and dog's eared. Matilda felt all this in three minutes; then she forgot it in the joy of seeing her sisters. The greeting on her part was very warm; too warm for her to find out that on their part it was a little constrained. They were interested enough, however, in all that had befallen Matilda, to give talk full flow; and made her tell them the whole story of the past months; the ship fever, the visit at Briery Bank, the adoption of herself to be a child of the house, the coming to New York, and the composition of the family circle in Mrs. Lloyd's house. The elder sisters said very little all the while, except to ask questions.
"And it's for good and all!" said Letitia, when Matilda had done.
"Yes. For good and all!"
"And what is Maria doing?" said Anne.
"Maria is in Poughkeepsie, you know, learning mantua-making."
"Is she happy? does she get along well?"
"I don't know," replied Matilda dubiously. She had not known Maria to seem happy for a very long period; certainly not at the time of her last visit to her.