Our Little Lady | Page 2

along the streets for her?--not carpets like ours, but the only sort they have, which are a kind of rough matting. And indeed she needs them, if those purple velvet shoes of hers are not to be quite ruined by the time she reaches home. For there are no pavements, and the streets are almost ankle-deep in mud, and worse than mud. Dead cats, rotten vegetables, animal refuse, and every kind of abominable thing that you could see or think of, all lie about in heaps, in these narrow, narrow streets, where the sun can hardly get down to the ground, and two people might sometimes shake hands from opposite windows in the upper stories, for they come farther out than the lower ones. Everybody throws all his rubbish into the street; all his slops, all his ashes, all his everything of which he wants to get rid. The smells are something dreadful, as soon as you come out of the perfumed churches. It is pleasanter to have the churches perfumed, undoubtedly; but it would be a good deal healthier if they kept the streets clean.
Quietly following the grand young Countess, at a respectful distance, come two women who are evidently mother and daughter. Their dress shows that they are not absolutely poor, but it tells at least as plainly that they are not at all rich. Just as they reach the west door, a little girl of ten comes quickly after them, dressed just like themselves, a woman in miniature.
"Why, Avice, where hast thou been?" says the elder of the two women.
"I was coming, Grandmother," explains little Avice, "and Father Thomas called me, and bade me tell you that the holy Bishop would come to see you this afternoon, and sup his four-hours with you."
Four-hours, taken as its name shows at four o'clock, was the meal which answered to our tea. Bishops do not often drink tea with women of this class, but this was a peculiar Bishop, and the woman to whom he sent this message was his own foster-sister.
"Truly, and I shall be glad to see him," says the Grandmother; and on they go out of the west door.
The carpets which were spread for the Countess have been rolled away, and our three humble friends pick their steps as best they may among the dirt-heaps, occasionally slipping into a puddle--I am afraid Avice now and then walks into it deliberately for the fun of the splash!--and following the road taken by the Countess as far as the Bull Gate, they then turn to the left, leaving the frowning Castle on their right, and begin to descend the steep slope well named Steephill.
They have not gone many yards when two people overtake them--a man and a woman. The man stops to speak: the woman marches on with her arms folded and her head in the air, as if they were invisible.
"Good morrow, Dan," says the old lady.
"Good morrow, Mother," answers Dan.
"What's the matter with Filomena?"
"A touch of the old complaint, that's all," answers Dan drily. "We'd a few words o' th' road a-coming--leastwise she had, for she got it pretty much to herself--and for th' next twelve hours or so she'll not be able to see anybody under a squire."
"Is she often like that, Dan?"
"Well, it doesn't come more days than seven i' th' week."
"Why, you don't mean to say it's so every day?" said Agnes, the younger woman of our trio.
Dan shook his head. "Happen there's an odd un now and then as gets let off," said he. "But I must after her, or there'll be more hot water. And it comes to table boilin', I can tell you. Good morrow!"
Dan runs rather heavily after his incensed spouse, and our friends continue to pick their way down Steephill. For rather more than half the way they go, and when just past the Church of Saint Lawrence, they turn into a narrow street on the left, and in a few yards more they are at home.
Home is one of the smallest houses you ever saw. It has only two rooms, one above the other; but they are a fair size, being about twenty-five feet by sixteen. The upper, of course, is the bedroom; the lower one is kitchen and parlour; and a ladder leads from one to the other. The upper chamber holds a bed, which is like a box out of which the bottom has been taken, filled with straw, and on that is a hard straw mattress, two excessively coarse blankets, and a thick, shaggy, woollen rug for a counterpane. There are not any sheets or pillow-cases; but a thick, hard bolster, stuffed like the mattress with straw, serves for a pillow.
At the foot of the oak bedstead is a large oak chest, big enough to