'Lisbeth learned a great many things very soon, though she was not at
school. A very great many things indeed; and they were not always
pleasant things. She learned, for one thing, that they grew poorer every
day, instead of growing richer. She learned that the dirty little
street, too little to be a real street, was not as pleasant to look upon
as the garden plot at home, and the green of the fields over the way.
She learned that mother grew thinner, and that the boys grew dirtier and
crosser, and the people down stairs, she found out, were not like the
mill hands at home, the mill hands and the little children.
She saw a great many fine sights; she saw shops which made her open her
eyes; and houses which astonished her to behold, and carriages which
took her breath away, and people who overcame her altogether. She saw
sights and shows such as she had never dreamed of; she saw a wax figure
at the corner, with a fine curled wig, a figure which turned from side
to side; she saw sights on every side to please her fancy, to delight
her eyes, but only to make her remember afterward that she lived among a
lot of dirty people, in two miserable old rooms, in a dirty little
street; that she was really happier in the place where she grew first
than in the place where she grew last; that made her wonder why she had
ever sighed, and sighed, and wished to get a hundred miles away from
that precious old mile-stone.
She was not contented in London a bit more than she had been contented
playing in the shadow of the steeple and of the mill. She was not
contented at all. Had she learned to be contented under the shadow of
the mill and the steeple, under the walnut tree, and among the flowers
around the mile-stone, she might have smiled brighter smiles in the dark
little room in the dirty old house, in the dirty little street in
London. A bright, contented flower says the same sweet words in the
fresh green fields, and in a little flower pot up in a London window; a
contented little flower always wears a bright face. A contented heart is
always cheerful.
'Lisbeth had never been contented. She was always wishing to be
somewhere else. She was not contented before she went to London, that
was the reason why she was not contented when she reached there.
'Lisbeth tried to find some nice little London girl to talk to; she
tried first to find a great many, then she tried to find one; she tried
to find some nice little London boys; then she tried to find one nice
little London boy; but the boys and the girls had not been taught to be
very nice, in the dirty old house in the dirty little street, and though
some of them had good enough faces, they had not pleasant ways, nor
pleasant words.
When Gorham and Dickon wanted to play they found nobody but boys who
were not comfortable boys to play with; at first they did not play with
those uncomfortable boys at all; then they played with them a little,
and then they played with them more, so that Dickon and Gorham became
after a time not as good and pleasant themselves as they once were.
One day there were some new people came to live in a room down stairs; a
mother and father and three little boys. They looked as though they had
never lived in such a dirty street before. They were good little boys,
with pleasant ways, and pleasant words, and very pleasant faces.
'Lisbeth liked to peep in and help them play; she liked to play with
them very much; they made her feel happier. 'Lisbeth had come to London,
but she was not very happy; she did not say so, but it was true just the
same.
These little boys had no toys to play with, but they were good and
contented just the same. They played with whatever came in their way;
they were as happy in playing with the old chairs as many boys are with
their rocking-horses. They were contented little boys. But they were
very poor; 'Lisbeth knew they were; she was very sorry that they were so
poor, but they were not. They did not care at all. She was sorry that
the mother and father had to leave them so much alone; perhaps they may
have been sorry themselves about this, I do not know.
How 'Lisbeth laughed when she saw them playing with the brooms. They
made a procession, that is they all walked in a line; the tallest at the
head, and the little one coming last, and each one carried a brush or
broom with a long handle, and if soldiers were ever proud of their guns,
so were these little boys proud. Perhaps they were more proud than
soldiers with guns.
[Illustration]
'Lisbeth knew that these little boys were alone a great deal, because
their mother and father were so poor, and were obliged to go and earn
all they could, and she used to run in very often to see how they
managed. But these were contented little boys; they were contented where
they found themselves, and that was the reason why they got along so
well.
If they had been discontented they would have gone out of their mother's
rooms into other rooms in the house, and then into the street, and into
the gutter. Then they would have become soiled and spoiled, and changed
altogether, but they were contented with their mother's rooms, and her
chairs and tables, and frying pans, and brooms, and all the things which
they found there; so they did not get soiled or spoiled or changed, but
kept good and bright, pleasant little pictures as you would find in a
day's walk.
'Lisbeth found, after she came to London, that there was a great deal
to be done besides play; she had to learn to sew and help mother earn
some money, but she was not very big and could not do much, only try.
At first 'Lisbeth believed she could make a great deal of money. She
knew people must make money in London; she had heard so. Besides, people
seemed to spend so much that there must be some way of getting it.
'Lisbeth was sure there was. She tried to make money in several ways.
This was a mistake; she should have been content with trying to help all
she could at home, and then mother would have had more time, and so
could have made more money, which would have helped them all. But this
was not 'Lisbeth's way of doing. She tried to make a way of her own.
One day 'Lisbeth saw a little boy sweeping a street crossing; she had
seen boys do this before, but had never thought anything about it. This
time she thought about it because she saw some gentleman drop a little
coin in the little boy's hand. This was a revelation to 'Lisbeth; it
taught her something which she did not know before.
In another hour 'Lisbeth was sweeping a very dirty crossing, and she
swept it and swept it over again; she swept until there really was not
another speck to sweep, and the people, by the dozens and scores and
hundreds walked over that crossing, and carried to it more mud for
'Lisbeth to sweep away, but nobody put an atom of anything in 'Lisbeth's
hand for sweeping it, though she stood there the whole long day; and she
found out still another time that money was hard to pick up even in
London, and if she stopped that day, in passing, as she generally did to
look at the wax figure in the curled wig, at the corner of the street,
she did not care a fig about it.