"When?"
"Any afternoon. To-morrow."
"What makes you want to go?" said Maria, looking at her.
"I think you ought to go," Matilda answered, demurely.
"And I say, what have you got to do with it? I don't see what particular concern of mine the Dows are, anyhow."
Matilda sat a long while thinking after this speech. She was on the floor, pulling off her stockings and unlacing her boots; and while her fingers moved slowly, drawing out the laces, her cogitations were very busy. What concern were the Dows of hers or Maria's? They were not pleasant people to go near, she judged, from the look of their house and dooryard as she had seen it in passing; and the uncombed, fly-away head of the little girl gave her a shudder as she remembered it. They were not people that were often seen in church; they could not be good; maybe they used bad language; certainly they could not be expected to know how to "behave." Slowly the laces were pulled out of Matilda's boots, and her face grew into portentous gravity.
"Aren't you coming to bed?" said Maria. "What can you be thinking of?"
"I am thinking of the Dows?"
"What about them? I never thought about them three times in my life."
"But oughtn't we to think about people, Maria?"