First, came the neighbour's children. By standing up on an old wooden stool in the yard, they could see Rachel at her window, and Rachel could see them. They were rude and ignorant little things enough, and no better than young heathens, in rearing and knowledge; yet they liked to hear Rachel singing hymns in a low voice; they even caught from her, scraps of verses, and sang them in their own fashion; and when Rachel, hearing this, took courage to open a conversation with them, and to teach them as well as she could, she found in them voluntary and sufficiently docile pupils. Their intercourse, indeed, was brief, and limited to a few minutes every evening that Rachel could steal up to her little room, but it was cordial and free. Another friend had Rachel, yet one with whom she had never exchanged speech. There existed, at the back of Mrs. Gray's house, a narrow court, inhabited by the poorest of the poor. Over part of this court, Mrs. Gray's back windows commanded a prospect which few would have envied-- yet it had proved to Rachel the source of the truest and the keenest pleasure. From her window, Rachel could look clearly into a low damp cellar opposite, the abode of a little old Frenchwoman, known in the neighbourhood, as "mad Madame Rose." Madame Rose, as she called herself, was a very diminutive old woman-- unusually so, but small and neat in all her limbs, and brisk in all her movements. She was dry, too, and brown as a nut, with a restless black eye, and a voluble tongue, which she exercised mostly in her native language--not that Madame Rose could not speak English; she had resided some fifteen years in London, and could say 'yes' and 'no,' &c., quite fluently. Her attire looked peculiar, in this country, but it suited her person excellently well; it was simply that of a French peasant woman, with high peaked cap, and kerchief, both snow-white, short petticoats, and full, a wide apron, clattering wooden shoes, and blue stockings.