cuits the
other day; and they riz up and browned, you never see! and the boys was
too happy for anything. I wisht you'd seen 'em, just. They thought
nothin' ever was so good, afore or since. Yes 'm, it's a first-rate
oven; bakes apples too, in the most likely manner."

"How is the neighbourhood, Mrs. Staples?" David asked.

"Well, sir, there's nothin' agin' the neighbourhood. They be's a little
noisy, by times; you can't expect they wouldn't; now the sun's warm in
the streets and the children gets out o' their holes and corners. I
sometimes think, what a mercy it is the sun shines! and specially to
them as hain't no fire or next to none. I often think the Lord's more
merciful than what men is."

"Do you think it is men's fault then, other men's, that such poor
people haven't fire to keep them warm?"

"Well whose should it be, sir, if it wouldn't?"

"Might it not be the people's own fault?"

"Sartain!" cried Mrs. Staples, "when the money goes for drink. But why
does it go for drink? I tell you, sir, folks loses heart when they
knows there ain't enough to make a fire and buy somethin' to cook on
the fire; and they goes off for what'll be meat and fire and
forgetfulness too, for a time. And that's because of the great rents,
that people that has no mercy lays on; and the mean little prices for
work that is all one can get often, and be thankful for that. It's just
runnin' a race with your strength givin' out every foot o' the way. And
it's allays the rich folks does it," added Mrs. Staples, not very
coherently.

"Rich people that give the low wages and put on the high rents, do you
mean?"

"That's what I just do mean; and I ought to know. If a body once gets
down, there's no chance to get up again, and then the drink comes easy."

"Do you know of anybody in distress near here, Mrs. Staples?" Matilda
asked.

"Half of 'em is, I guess," was the answer.

"But is there anybody you know?"

"Mrs. Binn's little boy is sick," remarked Sarah, as her mother was
pondering.

"What's the matter with him?"

"It's a kind o' waste, they say."

"Not a fever, or anything of that kind?" inquired David.

"O no, sir; he's been wasting, now, these three or four months."

"And they are not comfortable, Sarah?" Matilda asked.

"There's few is, livin' where those lives," said Mrs. Staples; "and of
course, sickness makes things wuss. No, they're fur from comfortable, I
should say."

"They haven't anything to give him," said