Mrs. Roberts uttered an exclamation. The house was one of the most forlorn
in the row, seeming, if the miserable state of the buildings would admit
of comparison, to be more out of repair than the others. It came home to
her just then, with a sudden, desolating force, that human beings, such as
she was trying to reach, and such as she hoped would live in heaven
forever, called such earthly habitations as these homes. What possible
idea could they ever get of heaven by calling it "home"?

"Do they have the whole of the house?"

She asked the question timidly, for the building looked very large, but
she was utterly unused to city tenement life.

"The _whole_ of that house?" Dick fairly shouted the sentence, and
bent himself double with laughter. "Well, I should say not, mum! As
near as I can calculate, about thirty-five different families have that
pleasure. The whole of the house! Oh, my! What a greeny!" And he
laughed again.

Mrs. Roberts exerted herself to laugh with him, albeit she was
horror-stricken. Thirty-five families in one house! How could they be
other than awful in their ways of living?

"I know almost nothing about great cities," she said; "my home was in
a much smaller one."

This was the truth, but not the whole truth. Instinct kept this veritable
lady, in the truest sense of the word, from explaining that she knew
nothing about the abject poor, when she was speaking to one of