Digby saw it, and perhaps to divert the feeling which rose in him, began to find fault with something else.
"That's a very uncomfortable chair you are sitting in!" he said with a strong expression of disapproval.
"O it does very well indeed," answered Mrs. Carpenter. "I want nothing, I think, having this delightful fire."
"How do you rest when you are tired?"
"I lean back. Or I lie down sometimes."
"Humph! Beds are very well at night. I do not think they are at all satisfactory by day."
"Why what would you have?" said Mrs. Carpenter, smiling at him.
"I'll see."
It was the next day only after this that Rotha, having finished her work for her teacher and nothing else at the moment calling for attention, was standing at the window looking out into the narrow street. The region was poor, but not squalid; nevertheless it greatly stirred Rotha's disgust. If New York is ever specially disagreeable, it finds the occasion in a certain description of March weather; and this was such an occasion. It was very cold; the fire in the grate was well made up and burning beautifully and the room was pleasant enough; but outside there were gusts that were almost little whirlwinds coursing up and down every street, carrying with them columns and clouds of dust. The dust accordingly lay piled up on one side of the way, swept off from the rest of the street; not lying there peacefully, but caught up again from time to time, whirled through the air, shaken out upon everybody and everything in its way, and finally swept to one side and deposited again.
"It's the most horrid weather, mother, you can think of!" Rotha reported from her post of observation. "I shouldn't think anybody would be out; but I suppose they can't help it. A good many people are going about, anyhow. Some of them are so poorly dressed, mother! there was a woman went by just now, carrying a basket; I should say she had very little on indeed under her gown; the wind just took it and wrapped it round her, and she looked as slim as a post."
"Poor creature!" said Mrs. Carpenter.
"Mother, we never saw people like that in Medwayville."
"No."
"Why are they here, and not there?"
"You must ask Mr. Digby."
"I don't want to ask Mr. Digby!--There are two boys; ragged;--and barefooted. I don't know what they are out for; they have nothing to do; they are just playing round an ash-barrel. I should think they'd be at home."
"Such people's home is often worse than the streets."
"But you don't know how it blows to-day. I should think, mother," said Rotha slowly, "New York must want a great many good people in it."
"There are a great many good people in it."
"What are they doing, then?"
"Looking out for Number One, mostly," Mrs. Cord answered, who happened to be in the room.
"But it wants people rich enough to look out for Number One, and for Number Two as well."
Mrs. Carpenter sighed. She knew there were more sides to the problem than the simple "one and two" which appeared to Rotha.
"There comes a coal cart, mother; that has to go, I suppose, for somebody wants it. I should hate to drive a coal cart! Mother, who wants it here? It is backing down upon our sidewalk."
"Mrs. Marble, I suppose."
"No, she don't; she has got her coal all in; and this isn't her coal at all; it is in big lumps some of it, like what came for the grate, and it isn't shiny like the stove coal. It must be for you, I guess."
Rotha ran down to see, and came back with the receipt for her mother to sign. Mrs. Carpenter signed with a trembling hand, and Rotha flew away again.
"It is a whole cart-load, mother," she said coming back.
"There is one good rich man in New York," said Mrs. Carpenter tremulously.
"Do you think he is rich?"
"I fancy so."
"He hasn't spent so very much on us, has he?" asked Rotha consideringly.
"It seems much to me. More than our share, I am afraid."
"Our share of what?"
"His kindness."
"Who has the other shares?"
"I cannot tell. Other people he knows, that are in need of it."
"Mother, we are not in _need_ of it, are we? We could get along without oysters, I suppose. But what I am thinking of is, if he gives other people as good a share of his time as he gives us, he cannot live at home much. Where _does_ Mr. Digby live, Mrs. Cord?"
"I don't know as I can say, Rotha. It is a hotel somewheres, I believe."
"I should not think anybody would live in a hotel," said Rotha, remembering her own and her mother's experience of the "North River." "Now here comes another cart the carts have to go in all sorts of times; but O how the dust blows about! This cart is carrying something--I can't see what it's all wrapped up."
"My dear Rotha," said her mother, "I am not interested to know what the carts in the street are doing. Are you?"
"This one is stopping, mother. It is stopping _here!_"
"Well, my dear, what if it is. It is no business of ours."
"The other cart was our business, though; how do you know, mother? It has stopped here, and the man is taking the thing off."
Mrs. Cord came to the window to look, and then went down stairs. Rotha, seeing that the object of her interest, whatever it were, had disappeared within doors, presently followed her. In the little bit of a hall below stood a large something which completely filled it up; and on one side and on the other, Mrs. Marble and Mrs. Cord were taking off the wrappings in which it was enfolded.
"Well, I declare!" said the former, when they had done. "Aint that elegant!"
"Just like him," said Mrs. Cord. "I guessed this was coming, or something like it."
"What is it?" asked Rotha.
"How much does a thing like that cost, now?" Mrs. Marble went on. "Oh see the dust on it! There's a half bushel or less. Here--wait till I get my brush.--How is it ever to go up stairs? that's what I'm lookin' at."
Help had to be called in; and meantime Rotha rushed up stairs and informed her mother that a chair was come for her that was like nothing she had ever seen in her life; "soft all over," as Rotha expressed it; "back and sides and all soft as a pillow, and yet harder than a pillow; like as if it were on springs everywhere;" which was no doubt the truth of the case. "It's like getting into a nest, mother; I sat down in it; there's no hard place anywhere; there's no wood to it, that you can see."
When a little later the chair made its appearance, and Mrs. Carpenter sank down into its springy depths, it is a pity that Mr. Digby could not have heard the low long-drawn 'Oh!--' of satisfaction and relief and wonder together, which came from her lips. Rotha stood and looked at her. Mrs. Carpenter was resting, in a very abandonment of rest; but in the abandonment of the moment shewing, as she did not use to shew it, the great enervation and prostration of her system. Her head, leaning back on the soft support it found, her hands laid exhaustedly on one side and on the other, the motionless pose of her whole person, struck Rotha with some strange new consciousness.
"Is it good?" she asked shortly.
"Very!" The word was almost a sigh.
"What makes you so weak to-day?"
"I am not weaker than usual."
"You don't always look like that."
"She's never had anything like that to rest in before," Mrs. Cord suggested. "A bed aint like one o' them chairs, for supportin' one everywhere alike. You let her rest, Rotha. Will you have an oyster, dear?"
Rotha sat down at the corner of the fireplace and stared at her mother; taking the oyster, and yet not relinquishing that air of helpless lassitude. She was not sewing either; and had not been sewing, Rotha remembered, except by snatches, for several days past. Rotha sat and gazed at her, an anxious shadow falling upon her features.
"You needn't look like that at her," said the good woman who was preparing Mrs. Carpenter's glass of wine; "she'll be rested now in a little, and feel nicely. She's been a wantin' this, or something
o' this sort; but there aint nothing better than one o' them spring chairs, for resting your back and your head and every inch of you at once. Now she's got her oyster and somethin' else, and she'll pick up, you'll see."
"How good it is you came to live here," said the sick woman. "I do not know what we should do without you. You seem to understand just how everything ought to be done."
"Mother," said Rotha,