"I can very easily suppose it," said Norton. "As soon as we get out of the cars in New York I'll shew you a case."
"Well, Norton, that is what I said. If everybody loved those poor people, don't you see, they would have coats, and whatever they need. It is because you and I and other people don't love them enough."
"I don't love another boy well enough to give him my overcoat," said Norton. "But coats wouldn't make a great many poor people respectable. Those children in the omnibus this morning had coats on, comfortable enough; the trouble was, they were full of buckwheat cake smoke."
"Well if people are not clean, that's their own fault," said Matilda. "But those people this morning hadn't perhaps any place to be in but their kitchen. They might not be able to help it, for want of another room and another fire."
Matilda was eager, but Norton was very much amused. He ordered some more ice cream and a charlotte. Matilda eat what he gave her, but silently carried on her thoughts; these she would have given to Maria, if she could; she was having more than enough.
Moralizing was at an end when she got to the gardener's shop. The consultations and discussions which went on then, drove everything else out of her head. The matter in hand was a winter garden, for their home in New York.
"I'll have some auriculas this year," said Norton. "You wouldn't know how to manage them, Pink. You must have tulips and snowdrops; O yes, and crocuses. You can get good crocuses here. And polyanthus narcissus you can have. You will like that."
"But what will you have, Norton?"
"Auriculas. That's one thing. And then, I think I'll have some Amaryllis roots—but I won't get those here. I'll get tulips and hyacinths, Pink."
"Shall we have room for so many?"