N.

When Mrs. Rowles had put on her best gown and her Sunday bonnet she was as pleasant-looking a woman as one was likely to meet between Littlebourne and London. “Going to town” was rather an event in her life, and one that called for the best gown and bonnet as well as for three-and-fourpence to pay the fare.

“Ned never will go to see his sister,” said Mrs. Rowles to herself. “I might as well try to move the lock as try to move him. And now that I have made up my mind to go I had better go, and get it over. Ned thinks that Londoners are too grand to care for their country relations. But I don’t think Mary is too grand to give me a welcome. I don’t want a fuss made over me, I am sure; and if I run up unexpected she won’t be able to make a fuss with the dinner. And when it is six months since you heard from them it is about time for you to go and see them. I am not comfortable in my mind; six months is a long time. Suppose they had gone off to Australia! I really should not wonder!”

It was nearly time to start on her walk to the station.

Rowles looked into the cottage, and his wife explained to him how he was to manage his dinner.

“Ah, peas now!” he said, looking at the green pearls lying in water in a pudding basin. “They don’t see such peas as those in London, I can tell you; and you’d be a deal welcomer, Emma, if you were to take them a basketful of green stuff. I suppose Thomas Mitchell has his supper for breakfast when he gets up at night, and begins his day’s work at bed-time. He might like peas for breakfast at ten o’clock P.M.; likewise broad beans. Just you wait three minutes. I bear them no ill-will, though I never could approve of a man being an owl.”

Within five minutes Rowles came back from his garden with a basket of fresh-smelling vegetables. He gave it to his wife, saying, “You be off, or you’ll miss your train. Give them my love when they get up this evening. There’s a call for the ‘Lock a-hoy!’ And here they come, girls in flannels and sailor hats, rowing for their lives, and men lolling on the cushions with fans and parasols.”

The husband went to open the gates for one of those water-parties which are to be seen nowhere but on the Thames, and Mrs. Rowles set off to walk to Littlebourne station.

She met with no adventures on her journey; reached Paddington safely, took an omnibus into the city, and then walked to one of the smaller streets on the eastern side of London.

This street was one which began with good, well-kept houses, and dwindled away into small ones out of repair. About the middle of the street Mrs. Rowles stopped, and went up on the door-step of a neat-looking house, every window of which had white curtains and flower-pots. She pulled the bell-handle which was second from the top in a row of handles at the side of the door, and put her basket down to rest herself, summoning up a kindly smile with which to greet her sister-in-law, Mary Mitchell. The air of London was heavy and the sunshine pale to Mrs. Rowles’s thinking, and the sky overhead was a very pale blue. There were odd smells about; stale fish and brick-fields seemed to combine, and that strange fusty odour which infects very old clothes. Mrs. Rowles preferred the scent of broad beans and pinks.

It was some time before the door was opened, and then a young woman appeared, holding it just ajar.

“Well, Mary, my dear oh, I declare, it is not Mary!”

“Would you please to say who you want?” The young woman was not over polite.

“I have come up from the country to see my sister-in-law, Mary Mitchell. I beg your pardon, my dear, if I rang the wrong bell.”

“Mrs. Mitchell don’t live here,” was the short reply.

“Not live here! Whatever do you mean?”

“I mean what I say; are you deaf? Mrs. Mitchell left here near upon six months ago.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Rowles, much astonished; “I never thought of such a thing. Whatever shall I do? And all this green stuff to carry back again.”

“Can’t you take it to her?” asked the young woman more gently.

“I don’t know where she has gone to. Australia most likely.”

“Australia, indeed! She has only gone to the other end of the street, N. And when you can’t pay your rent, and three weeks running on to four, what can you expect from your landlord?”

The door was closed, and Mrs. Rowles left standing on the step, greatly shocked and agitated. Had the Mitchells been turned out by their landlord for not paying their rent? Had they grown dishonest? Had Mitchell taken to drink? What could it mean?

“N. And this is only 42; the odd numbers are on the other side. I must cross. What a lot of rubbish on the road; and do you think I would let my girl stand out bareheaded like that, gossiping with a lot of idle young chaps?” Thus thinking and moralizing Mrs. Rowles went down the street towards the eastern end of it.

She noticed the change in the houses. Their fronts grew narrower; there was a storey less; the door-steps were not hearth-stoned; the area railings were broken. No white curtains, or but few and soiled ones; hardly a flower; windowpanes filled with brown paper instead of glass; doors standing half open; heaps of cinders and refuse lying at the edge of the pavement; girls almost without frocks nursing dirty, white-faced babies. It seemed a long way to N. N stood out from its fellows, and marked the point at which the street became narrower, dirtier, noisier than before. Was it possible that Edward Rowles’s sister could be living here?

The comely, well-clad woman from Littlebourne looked into the entry of N. She saw a narrow passage, without floorcloth or carpet; a narrow, dirty staircase led up to the rooms above. From the front room on the ground floor came the whirring sound of a sewing-machine; it might perhaps be Mary Mitchell at work.

Mrs. Rowles knocked on the door of the room.

“Who’s there?”

“Please, does Mrs. Mitchell live here?”

“Top floor, back,” replied the voice, and the whirr was resumed.

Picking her way, for the stairs were thick with mud from dirty boots and with droppings from pails, beer-cans, and milk-jugs, Mrs. Rowles went up the first flight. In the front room a woman’s voice was scolding in strong language; in the back room a baby was wailing piteously. On the next floor one door stood open, revealing a bare room, with filthy and torn wall-paper, with paint brown from finger-marks, with cupboard-doors off their hinges, and the grate thick with rust. The visitor shuddered. Through the next half-open door she saw linen, more brown than white, hanging from lines stretched across, and steaming as it dried in the room, which was that of five persons, eating, living, and sleeping in it.

Mrs. Rowles felt a little faint; she thought that so many stairs were very trying. From this point there was nothing in the way of hand-rail; so she kept close to the wall as she carried her basket up still higher.

At the door of the back room she knocked.

There was a sort of scuffling noise inside, and a few moments passed before it was opened.

The sisters-in-law looked at each other in amazement. Rosy Emma Rowles, in her blue gown and straw bonnet with red roses, with her stout alpaca umbrella and her strong basket packed tight with vegetables, was an unaccustomed vision at N; while the pale, thin, ragged, miserable Mary Mitchell was an appalling representative of her former self.

“Mary!”

“Is it you, Emma Rowles? However did you get here?”

“I came by the train from Littlebourne,” said Mrs. Rowles simply. “May I come in?”

“Oh, you may come in if you care to,” was the bitter reply.

Mrs. Rowles looked round her as she entered, and was so much shocked at what she saw that for a few moments she could not speak.

In the middle of the room was a square table, on which lay a mass of thick black silk and rich trimmings, which even Emma Rowles’s country eyes could see were being put together to form a very handsome mantle suitable for some rich lady. A steel thimble, a pair of large scissors, a reel of cotton and another of silk lay beside the materials. In strong contrast to this beautiful and expensive stuff was the sight which saddened the further corner of the small room. Close under the sloping, blackened ceiling was a mattress laid on the floor, and on it a wan, haggard man, whom Mrs. Rowles supposed to be Thomas Mitchell, though she hardly recognized him. There was also another mattress on the floor. The blankets were few, but well-worn counterpanes covered the beds. A little washstand with broken crockery, a kettle, some jam-pots, and some medicine bottles were about all the rest of the furniture. All that she saw told Mrs. Rowles very plainly that her relations had fallen into deep poverty.

“Why, Tom,” she began, “I’m afraid you are ill.”

“Been ill these two months,” he replied in a weak voice.

“Sit down,” said Mrs. Mitchell, pushing the best chair to her sister-in-law, and standing by the table to resume her work.

“We did not know Tom was ill,” said Mrs. Rowles.

“I daresay not,” answered Mrs. Mitchell.

“I would have come sooner to see him if I had known.”

“Oh, it is no use to bother one’s relations when one falls into misfortunes. It is the rich folks who are welcome, not the poor ones.”

“I hope you will make me welcome,” said Mrs. Rowles, “though I am not rich.”

“Well, you are richer than we are,” remarked Mrs. Mitchell, softening a little, “and you are welcome; I can’t say more. But I daresay if you had known what a place you were coming to you would have thought twice about it. Six months we have had of it. First there were the changes made at the printing-office, and then the men struck work, and there was soon very little to live on; for it’s when the strike allowance doesn’t come in so fast that the pinch comes.”

Mrs. Rowles looked round to see where the children could be hiding. Not a child’s garment was to be seen, nor a toy.

“Where are the children?” she asked, half fearing to hear that they were all dead.

“Albert has got a little place in the printing-office. He was took on when Tom was laid up with rheumatic fever. Juliet is gone to the kitchen to try if she can get a drop of soup or something. They only make it for sick people now the hot weather has set in. Florry and Tommy and Willie and Neddy are all at school, because the school-board officer came round about them the other day. But it is the church school as they go to, where they ain’t kept up to it quite so sharp. They will be in presently.”

“And the baby?”

“Oh, the baby is out with Amy. He’s that fractious with his teeth that Thomas can hardly put up with him in the house.”

Mrs. Rowles was now taking out the good things from her basket. She produced a piece of bacon, some beans, about a peck of peas, a home-made dripping cake, and some new-laid eggs.

“Edward packed it with his own hands,” she explained. “He hoped you would not be too proud to accept a few bits of things from the country.”

“Proud? Me proud?” and Mrs. Mitchell burst into tears.

“We are too hungry to be proud,” said the sick man, with more interest in his tone. “They do smell good. They remind me of the country.”

After rubbing her eyes Mrs. Rowles looked about for a saucepan, and, having found an old one in the cupboard, began to fill it with the bacon and the broad beans. “We killed a pig in the spring,” she said; “and Rowles is a rare one to keep his garden stuff going.”

Little was said while Mrs. Rowles cooked, and Mrs. Mitchell sewed, and Thomas sniffed the reviving green odour of the fresh vegetables. This quiet was presently interrupted by the sound of someone coming up the stairs.

Mrs. Mitchell listened. “That is Juliet. There! I expected it!”

And a crash was heard, and a cry, and they knew that something unpleasant had happened.

“There never was such a child!” said the mother; while the father moaned out, “Oh, dear!”

Mrs. Rowles went out on the landing at the top of the stairs, and saw a girl of about thirteen sitting crouched on the lower half of the double flight, beside her the broken remains of a jug, and some soup lying in a pool, which she was trying to scrape up with her fingers, sucking them after each attempt.

“Is that you, Juliet?” said her aunt.

“Yes. I’ve spilt the soup and broke the jug.”

“Oh, Juliet, how could you?”

“The jug had got no handle; that’s why I came to drop it. And the soup was only a teeny drop, so it’s no great loss. And the bannisters was all broke away for lighting the fires, and that’s how I came to fall over; and I might have broke my leg and been took to the hospital, and I should have had plenty of grub there.”

The child said this in a surly tone, as if all that had happened had been an injury to her even her escape from breaking her leg and to no one else.

“Well, come up,” said Mrs. Rowles, who would hardly have been so calm had the soup and the jug been her own; “come up and see what there is for dinner here.”

“I don’t care,” said Juliet, as she left the remains of the spoilt articles where they lay, and came up to the room. She was a strange-looking child, with brows knitted above her deep-set eyes, with a dark, pale skin, and dark untidy hair.

“Ah, you’ve been at it again!” cried Mrs. Mitchell. “Well, it was my own fault to send you for it. You are the stupidest and awkwardest girl I ever come across.”

“Then, why did you send me?” retorted Juliet. “I didn’t want to go, I’m sure.”

“Hush, Juliet,” interposed her father; “you must not speak so to your mother. Here is your aunt come from Littlebourne, and brought in the most splendid dinner.”

“I don’t want no dinner,” said Juliet.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Rowles very gently, “I thought you would help me dish it up.”

“I’m that stupid and awkward,” said the girl, “that I should spill it and spoil it for you. If they’d let me go to a place I might learn to do better.”

“Who would take her?” Mrs. Mitchell appealed to her sister; “and she ought to help her own people before wanting to go out among strangers.”

“Yes, of course,” replied Mrs. Rowles. “Everything is like charity, and begins at home.”

By this time the unwonted prospect of a really hearty dinner began to soften the stern Juliet, and her brows unknitted themselves, showing that her eyes would be pretty if they wore a pleasant expression. It seemed to Mrs. Rowles that life had latterly been too hard and sad for this girl, just beginning to grow out of the easy ignorance of childhood which takes everything as it comes; and a little plan began to form itself in the good woman’s mind for improving Juliet’s disposition and habits.

Before the dinner was ready there was a loud noise of feet tramping upstairs. They were the feet of five more young Mitchells; and Amy’s footsteps were very heavy, for she carried the baby. Albert, who was in the printing-office, did not come home to dinner.

Though the plates and knives and forks were all out of order, and though an old newspaper acted as tablecloth, yet the meal was thoroughly enjoyed; even Mitchell ate some of the beans, with a boiled egg, and said that they put new life into him. Mrs. Rowles’s own appetite was satisfied with a slice of cake and the brightening faces around her.

Mrs. Mitchell gave a contemptuous glance at the mantle hanging on a nail in the wall, and took the baby on her knee and danced him about; and the little fellow burst into a chuckling laugh, and Thomas echoed it with a fainter and feebler one.

At that precise moment there was a knock on the door. A voice said “May I come in?” and a little elderly lady put her head into the room.