"
"No," I said; "I'll go up at once, if you've no objection."
"Och, thin, but the sheets isn't aired--no--faix; and I'm thinking the
gentleman as is a going isn't gone yet."
But I insisted on going up at once; and, grumbling, she followed me. I
stopped on the landing of the second floor, and asked which way; and seeing
her in no hurry to answer, opened a door, inside which I heard the hum
of many voices, saying in as sprightly a tone as I could muster, that I
supposed that was the workroom.
As I had expected, a fetid, choking den, with just room enough in it for
the seven or eight sallow, starved beings, who, coatless, shoeless, and
ragged, sat stitching, each on his truckle-bed. I glanced round; the man
whom I sought was not there.
My heart fell; why it had ever risen to such a pitch of hope I cannot tell;
and half-cursing myself for a fool, in thus wildly thrusting my head into a
squabble, I turned back and shut the door, saying--
"A very pleasant room, ma'am, but a leetle too crowded."
Before she could answer, the opposite door opened; and a face
appeared--unwashed, unshaven, shrunken to a skeleton.
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