“Oh, yes, dearie little Fine Feathers. This is the way from where you came to where Lady lives—the only way, too. You can’t go no other way not at all,” said the crone, in a conciliating tone. “Oh, then I am so sorry. Oh, do let’s get out of here as fast as we can—Oh, phew! what makes people live in such a nasty place as this when there is ever so much big, beautiful country in the world?” said Owlet, holding her nose between thumb and finger. “Oh, the blooming innocent! she arsks why people live in such a nasty place as this? Lord, I wonder if she thinks they choose?” inquired the ragpicker of the universe at large. Then looking in contemptuous pity on the ignorance of her little companion, she answered to the point: “’Cause they can’t ’elp it. They’s too blooming poor to be let live anywhere else.” “Oh, I am so sorry for them! But, please hurry! I can walk faster if I try. This place does make me so sick!—sick at my stomach! I—I’m afraid I shall throw up presently,” said Owlet, beginning to gag. “Hold on, Feathers! Oh, hold on! We’ll soon get there now! Here, smell this ’bacco,” said the ragpicker, drawing from her bosom a quid of “Old Pig” and offering it to the child. “Oh, no!—Oh, I can’t!—It—I can’t!—Oh, please hurry!” panted the child, in great bodily distress. “Well, now, if as ’ow yer can’t ’bide this one minnit, ’ow do yer think the poor souls as ’ave to live here all the blooming days of their lives—day in and day out, night in and night out—can a-bear it?” demanded, and not without reason, the animated mass of rags and filth by Owlet’s side. “Oh, the poor people! Oh, I am so awful sorry for them! I will ask Lady as soon as ever I get home to take them out of this horrid place, and give them lovely houses and sweet gardens in the beautiful country. Lady is awful rich, you know! And good! Oh, so good! You don’t know—oh, you don’t know how good she is!” said Owlet, with a philanthropist’s enthusiasm, forgetting her disgust in her ardor. “And she’ll do it!” exclaimed the crone, with a harsh laugh of scornful incredulity—“Oh, she’ll do it! You may depend she’ll do it! I never seed her face to face, but I know as she’ll do every bit of it.” “Yes, indeed, she will!” replied ignorant and confident Owlet; but she faltered as she spoke, and began to totter as she walked, for the stench of that pest place was penetrating, acrid, insistent. Owlet was again overpowered. “Oh, please—go fast—hurry—hurry—out of this—or I shall—drop down—dead!” she gasped. “Yes, my pretty little Fine Feathers; in one minute. You see, I live here, dearie—I——” “You!” exclaimed the child, momentarily revived by her astonishment, and interrupting the hag’s speech; but the next instant wondering at herself for being the least surprised, for it seemed so natural that this creature should live in just this place.