Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/128

 drive away. Whether it was the good heart or the elegant trap it would be hard to say.

The coachman had taken his orders without a change of expression He drove farther and farther along the strange streets of the poor quarter, just as if he were going to a court ball.

At last he received command to stop, and it was high time. The streets became narrower and narrower, it was almost as if the well fed horses and the elegant trap would be caught like a stopper in the neck of a bottle.

The correct coachman gave no sign of anxiety although the situation was really becoming acute. An impudent voice called from a garret window and advised him to kill the horses because they would never get out alive.

Mrs. Warden climbed down and turned into a still narrower street. She had made up her mind to see the worst. In a door stood a half grown girl. “Do poor people live in this house?”

The girl laughed and answered something then darted ahead of her through the door. Mrs. Warden did not catch the words, but she had the feeling that she said something insulting.

She entered the first room she came to. The air was so thick it made her dizzy, and she was glad to find a place to sit down by the stove. In the gesture with which the woman swept the clothing from the seat to the floor, and in the smile with which she greeted the elegant lady, there was something that offended her. She received likewise the impression