If Mattie was not glad to see her guest, she seemed to be, which answered every purpose for the tired woman, who followed her into the dark, narrow hall, filled with the sickly odor of the kitchen, and up the narrow stairs, through a still darker hall, and into the front parlor, which looked out upon the Bowery.  This was comparatively comfortable, for there was a fire in the stove, and the carpet the same which Aunt Betsy remembered to have seen in Mrs. Tubbs’ best room at Silverton.  But the diminutive dimensions of the apartment struck her at once, and she mentally decided that it must be the “libry.”  But, alas! the so-called “library” was a large-sized closet, or single room, at the other end of the hall, and now used as an omnium gatherum for the various articles Mrs. Tubbs found necessary for her “back parlor,” or dining-room, where the table was set cornerwise, its soiled linen and dingy napkins presenting a striking contrast to the snowy cloth which always covered the table at the farmhouse, while the dry, baker’s bread, and the frowsy butter were almost more than Aunt Betsy could swallow, hungry as she was.

But all this was half an hour after the time when Mrs. Tubbs came in to meet her, expressing genuine pleasure at seeing her there, and feeling what she said; for Mrs. Tubbs did not take kindly to city life, and the sight of a familiar face, which brought the country with it, was very welcome to her.  Mattie, on the contrary, liked New York, and there was scarcely a street where she had not been, with Tom for a protector; while she was perfectly conversant with all the respectable places of amusement—­with their different prices and different grades of patrons.  She knew where Wilford Cameron’s office was, and also his house, for she had walked by the latter many times, admiring the elegant curtains and feasting her eyes upon the glimpses of inside grandeur, which she occasionally obtained as some one came out or went in.  Once she had seen Helen and Katy enter their carriage, which the colored coachman drove away, but she had never ventured to accost them.  Katy would not have known her if she had, for the family had come to Silverton while she was at Canandaigua, and as, after her return to Silverton, until her marriage, Mattie had been in one of the Lawrence factories, they had never met.  With Helen, however, she had a speaking acquaintance; but she had never presumed upon it in New York, though to some of her young friends she had told how she once sat in the same pew with Mrs. Wilford Cameron’s sister when she went to the “Episcopal meeting,” and the consideration which this fact procured for her from those who had heard of Mrs. Wilford Cameron, of Madison Square, awoke in her the ambition to know more of that lady, and, if possible, gain an entrance to her dwelling.  To this end she favored Aunt Betsy’s visit, hoping thus to accomplish her object, for, of course, when Miss Barlow went to Mrs. Cameron’s, she was