lda, that you came to see."

"_That?_ Why does he--why do they put him there?"

"Mrs. Binn's room is so small and so hot. It's there, Miss Matilda;
you'll see it. When she's doing her washing and ironing, the place is
so full of steam and so hot; and there ain't no room for the bed
neither; and so she put Josh here."

Sarah led the way to Mrs. Binn's room, and Matilda followed her in a
bewildered state of mind. She saw as soon as the door was opened the
truth of Sarah's statements. The attic room was so small that Mrs.
Binn's operations must have been carried on with the greatest
difficulty; impossible Matilda would have thought them, but there were
the facts. One dormer window in the roof was effectually shut up and
hindered from its office of admitting air, by the pipe of the stove
which passed out through the sash. As it was the end of the week, no
washing encumbered the six feet clear of space; but the stove was fired
up and Mrs. Binn was ironing and some clothes were hung up to air. It
was neither desirable nor very practicable to go in; only Matilda edged
a little way within the door, and David and Sarah stood at the opening.

"What's all to do?" said Mrs. Binn at this unlooked-for interruption,
stopping iron in hand and peering at them between shirts and overalls
hanging on the cords stretched across the room. She was a red-faced
woman; no wonder! a small, incapable-looking, worn-out-seeming woman
besides.

"This lady has come to see Josh, Mrs. Binn."

"What does she want of him?"

"Nothing," said Matilda gently; "Sarah told us how he had been sick a
long while; and we came to see how he was and what he wanted."

"He won't want anything soon, but a coffin and a grave," said his
mother. Matilda wondered how she could speak so; she did not know yet
how long misery makes people seem hard. "How he'll get them, I don't
know," Mrs. Binn went on; "but I s'pose--"

Her voice choked; she stopped there.

"Have you no place to put him but where he is lying?" Matilda asked, by
way of leading on to something else.

"No, miss; no place," said the woman, feeling of her iron and taking up
another one from the stove. "He'd perish in here, if he wouldn't be
under my feet. An' I must stand, to live."

"Where do you dry the clothes you wash?"

"Here. I haven't an inch besides."

"I don't see how you can."

"Rich folks don't see a sight o' things," said poor Mrs. Binn; "don't
like to, I guess."

"Is there not ano