Suppose we should not like it after we get there?"
Mrs. Carpenter did not answer.
"What then, mother? Would you come back again, if we did not like it there?"
"There would be no place to come to, here, any more, my child. I hope we shall find it comfortable where we are going."
"Then you don't know?" said Rotha. "And perhaps we shall not! But, mother, that would be dreadful, if we did not like it!"
"I hope you would help me to bear it."
"I!" said Rotha. "You don't want help to bear anything; do you, mother?"
An involuntary gush of tears came at this appeal; they were not suffered to overflow.
"I should not be able to bear much without help, Rotha. Want help? yes, I want it – and I have it. God sends nothing to his children but he sends help too; else," said Mrs. Carpenter, brushing her hand across her eyes, "they would not last long! But, Rotha, lie means that we should help each other too."
"I help you?"
"Yes, certainly. You can, a great deal."
"That seems very funny. Mother, what is wrong about aunt Serena?" said Rotha, following a very direct chain of ideas.
"I hope nothing is wrong about her."
And Mrs. Carpenter, in her gentle, unselfish charity, meant it honestly; her little daughter was less gentle and perhaps more logical.
"Why, mother, does she ever do anything to help you?"
"Her life is quite separate from mine," Mrs. Carpenter replied evasively.
"Well, it would be right in her to help you. And when people are not right, they are wrong."
"Let us take care of our own right and wrong, Rotha. We shall have enough to do with that."
"But, mother, what is the matter with aunt Serena? Why doesn't she help you? She can."
"Our lives went different ways, a long time ago, my child. We have never been near each other since."
"But now you are going to be where she is, mother?"
"Rotha, did you rip up your brown merino?"
"Not yet."
"Then go and do it now. I want it to make over for you."
"You'll never make much of that," said the girl discontentedly. But she obeyed. She saw a certain trait in the lines of her mother's lips; it might be reserve, it might be determination, or both; and she knew no more was to be got from her at that time.
The brown merino disappointed her expectation; for when cleaned and made over it proved to be a very respectable dress. Rotha was well satisfied with it. The rest of Mrs. Carpenter's preparations were soon accomplished; and one day in November she and her little daughter left what had been home, and set out upon their journey to seek another in the misty distance. The journey itself was full of wonder and delight to Rotha. It was a very remarkable thing, in the first place, to find the world so large; then another remarkable thing was the variety of the people in it. Rotha had known only one kind, speaking broadly; the plain, quiet, respectable, and generally comfortable in habitants of the village and of the farms around the village. They were not elegant specimens, but they were solid, and kindly. She saw many people now that astonished her by their elegance; few that awakened any feeling of confidence. Rotha's eyes were very busy, her tongue very silent. She was taking her first sips at the bitter-sweet cup of life knowledge.
The third-class hotel at which they put up in New York received her unqualified disapprobation. None of its arrangements or accommodations suited her; with the single exception of gas burners.
Close, stuffy, confined, gloomy, and dirty, she declared it to be.
"Mother," she said half crying, "I hope our house will not be like this?"
"We shall not have a house, Rotha; only a few rooms."
"They'll be rooms in a house, I suppose," said the girl petulantly; "and I hope it will be very different from this."
"We will have our part of it clean, at any rate," answered her mother.
"And the rest too, won't you? You would not have rooms in a house that was not all clean, would you, mother?"
"Not if I could help it."
"Cannot you help it?"
"I hope so. But you must not expect that things here in a big city can ever be bright and sweet like the fields at home. That can hardly be."
Rotha sighed. A vision of dandelions came up before her, and waving grass bent by summer wind. But there was hope that the morrow's search would unfold to her some less unpromising phases of city life, and she suspended judgment.
Next day, wonder and amusement for a time superseded everything else. The multitude of busy people coming and going, the laden carts and light passing carriages, the gay shops, and the shops that were not gay, filled Rotha's eye and mind. Even the vegetables exposed at a corner shop were a matter of lively interest.
"O mother," she cried, "is this a market?"
"No. It is a store for groceries."
"Well, they have got some other things here. Mother, the cabbages don't look nice." Then soon after coming to a small market store, Rotha must stand still to look.
"They are a little better here," she judged. "Mother, mother! they have got everything at this market. Do see! there are fish, and oysters, and clams; and eggs; and what are those queer things?"
"Lobsters."
"What are they good for?"
"To eat."
"They don't look as if they were good for anything. Mother, one could get a very good dinner here."
"With plenty of money."
"Does it take much? – to get one dinner?"
"Are you hungry?" said her mother, smiling faintly. "It takes a good deal of money to get anything in New York, Rotha."
"Then I am afraid we ought to have staid at Medwayville."
A conclusion which almost forced itself upon Mrs. Carpenter's mind. For the business of finding a lodging that would suit her and that she could pay for, soon turned out to be one of difficulty. She and Rotha grew weary of walking, and more weary of looking at rooms that would suit them which they could not pay for, and other rooms which they could pay for and that would not do. All the houses in New York seemed to come under one or the other category. From one house agency to another, and from these to countless places referred to, advertised for hire, the mother and daughter wandered; in vain. One or the other difficulty met them in every case.
"What will you do, mother, if you cannot find a place?" Rotha asked, the evening of the first day. "Go back to Medwayville?"
"We cannot go back."
"Then we must find a place," said Rotha.
And driven by this necessity, so they did. The third day, well tired in body and much more in mind, they did at last find what would do. It was a long walk from their hotel, and seemed endless. No doubt, in the country, with grass under their feet, or even the well beaten foot track beside the highway, neither mother nor daughter would have thought anything of the distance; but here the hard pavement wearied them, and the way measured off by so many turns and crossings and beset with houses and human beings, seemed a forlorn pilgrimage into remote regions. Besides, it left the pleasanter part of the city and went, as Rotha remarked, among poor folks. Down Bleecker St. till it turned, then following the new stretch of straight pavement across Carmine St., and on and on into the parts then called Chelsea. On till they came to an irregular open space.
"This must be Abingdon Square," said the mother.
"It isn't square at all," Rotha objected.
"But this must be it. Then it's only one street more, Rotha. Look for Jane Street."
Beyond Abingdon Square Jane Street was found to be the next crossing.
They turned the corner