Our Little Lady | Page 2

lifts its head to receive its lady, and she
disappears from our sight.
Do you notice that carpets are spread 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