carriage-wheels as they rolled off
over the smooth roadway of the villa quarter.

"What a good heart Emily has," she sighed.

Nothing could be more remote than envy from the good-natured lady's
character; and yet--it was with a feeling akin to envy that she now
followed the light carriage with her eyes. But whether it was her
friend's good heart or her elegant equipage that she envied her it was
not easy to say. She had given the coachman his orders, which he had
received without moving a muscle; and as remonstrance was impossible to
him, he drove deeper and deeper into the queerest streets in the poor
quarter, with a countenance as though he were driving to a Court ball.

At last he received orders to stop, and indeed it was high time. For
the street grew narrower and narrower, and it seemed as though the fat
horses and the elegant carriage must at the very next moment have stuck
fast, like a cork in the neck of a bottle.

The immovable one showed no sign of anxiety, although the situation was
in reality desperate. A humorist, who stuck his head out of a garret
window, went so far as to advise him to slaughter his horses on the
spot, as they could never get out again alive.

Mrs. Warden alighted, and turned into a still narrower street; she
wanted to see poverty at its very worst.

In a door-way stood a half-grown girl. Mrs. Warden asked: "Do very poor
people live in this house?"

The girl laughed and made some answer as she brushed close past her in
the narrow door-way. Mrs. Warden did not understand what she said, but
she had an impression that it was something ugly.

She entered the first room she came to.

It was not a new idea to Mrs. Warden that poor people never keep their
rooms properly ventilated. Nevertheless, she was so overpowered by the
atmosphere she found herself inhaling that she was glad to sink down on
a bench beside the stove.

Mrs. Warden was struck by something in the gesture with which the woman
of the house swept down upon the floor the clothes which were lying on
the bench, and in the smile with which she invited the fine lady to be
seated. She received the impression that the poor woman had seen better
days, although her movements were bouncing rather than refined, and her
smile was far from pleasant.

The long train of Mrs. Warden's pearl-gray visiting dress spread over
the grimy floor, and as she stooped and drew it to her she could not
help thinking of an expression of Heine's,