"What then?" said David. "What has Judy been doing?"
"Very wise of you, I'm sure, and I am very glad to hear it. What _has_ troubled you? something bad, I should judge."
"Something so bad, you could never think it was true," said Matilda, making vain efforts to dry off the tears which kept welling freshly forth.
"I? O no; I haven't got any thing to lose. Nothing particular, I mean. But I have seen such a place"--
"A _place?_" said David, very much puzzled. "What about the place?"
"Oh, David, such a place! And people live there!"--Matilda could not get on.
David was curious. He stood and waited, while Matilda sobbed and tried to stop and talk to him. For, seeing that he wanted to hear, it was a sort of satisfaction to tell to some one what filled her heart. And at last, being patient, he managed to get a tolerably clear report of the case. He did not run off at once then. He stood still looking at Matilda.
"It's disgraceful," he said. "It didn't use to be so among my people."
"And, oh David, what can we do? What can I do? I don't feel as if I could _bear_ to think that Sarah must sleep in that place to-night. Why the floor was just earth, damp and wet. And not a bedstead--just think! What can I do, David?"
"I don't see that you can do much. You cannot build houses to lodge all the poor of the city. That would take a good deal of money; more than you have got, little one."
"But--I can't reach them all, but I can do something for this one," said Matilda. "I _must_ do something."
"Even that would take a good deal of money," said David.
"I must do something," Matilda repeated. And she went to her own room to ponder how, while she was getting ready for dinner. Could she save anything from her Christmas money?
Matilda's thoughts about Christmas took now another character. Instead of the delightful confusion of pretty things for rich hands, among which she had only to choose, her meditations dwelt now upon the homelier supplies of the wants of her poor little neighbour. What could be had instead of that damp cellar with its mud floor? how might some beginnings of comfort be brought to cluster round the little street-sweeper, who except in Sunday school had hardly known what comfort was? It lay upon Matilda's heart; she dreamed about it at night and thought about it nearly all day, while she was mending Mrs. Lloyd's lace shawl.