"We thought maybe your children might like to go to Sunday-School," said Maria, with a great deal of trepidation; "and we just came to ask them. That's all."
"How did ye know but they went already?" the woman asked, looking at Maria from the corner of her eye.
"I didn't know. I just came to ask them."
"Well, I just advise you not to mix yourself with people's affairs till you do know a little about 'em. What business is it o' yourn, eh, whether my children goes to Sunday-School? Sunday-School! what a poke it is!"
"They did not come to our Sunday-School," said Matilda, for her sister was nonplussed; "and we would like to have them come; unless they were going somewhere else."
"They may speak for themselves," said Mrs. Dow; and she opened an inner door, and called in a shrill voice—"Araminty!—Jemimy!—Alexander!—come right along down, and if ye don't I'll whip ye."
She went back to her washing-tub, and Maria and Matilda looked to see three depressed specimens of young human life appear at that inner door; but first tumbled down and burst in a sturdy, rugged young rascal of some eight or nine years; and after him a girl a little older, with the blackest of black eyes and hair, the latter hanging straight over her face and ears. The eyes of both fastened upon their strange visitors, and seemed as if they would move no more.
"Them girls is come to get you to their Sunday-School," said the mother. "Don't you want for to go?"
No answer, and no move of the black eyes. Matilda certainly thought they looked as if they feared the lifting of no mortal hand, their mother's or any other.
"Would you like to go to Sunday-School?" inquired Maria politely, driven to speak by the necessities of the silence. But she might as well have asked Mrs. Dow's wash-tub. The mother laughed a little to herself.