Now 'Lisbeth had never given up counting the miles to London. She had counted them up by tens many a time; she had counted them up by twenties; she had counted them up every way there was to count them, but they continued to be a great many miles. When she learned that she was going to grow in a new place, she believed that nothing would ever trouble her any more; that the world would be made over new.

'Lisbeth could not help in getting ready; if she had done less in getting ready she might have helped her mother more. But mother helped herself. She sold a great many things, and she left a great many things to be sent after her, and she carried a great many things with her.

Mother cried when she left the old house, but 'Lisbeth did not cry, she danced about on the points of her toes, till she laughed herself quite red in the face. 'Lisbeth had always been a little foolish about London.

'Lisbeth had wished a great while to go to London. She might have been a great deal happier in the beautiful place where she grew if she had not wished so hard; she had wished very hard and she got there. She had always believed that London was delightful; now she knew it was. She had lived in a dear little mite of a house, now she would live in a tall one. She had lived next and near to a great many people, now she would live under the roof with a great many people. She had lived on a lane, now she would live on a—well, a street which was too little and short and narrow to be called a street.

'Lisbeth knew she had come to London because she was poorer, instead of because she was richer, but that did not make any difference. At the end of the street too little to be called a street, was a real, true, broad street, with fine houses packed together from one end to the other end of it.

'Lisbeth slipped down the stairs, and along the little street to the corner. She threw up her hands in admiration. She looked up and down in delight. It was a fine thing to live in London, a very great and fine thing indeed. She ran quite out of the little street to look up and down the greater one.

She saw the windows in rows, blazing with lights. She clapped her hands; she was delighted. She heard children's voices from an open window. She climbed stealthily up to the window and looked in. Six children appeared before her, with very sweet faces, and pretty clothes, and the lights flashed down upon them from overhead.

They were playing with dolls. They were playing so hard that they did not see 'Lisbeth clinging to the sill. They were pretending that the dolls were talking to each other, that the one was the man and the other the mistress. The mistress was telling the man to take off his hat; but he was a stubborn man, he would not take off his hat. Then the children all laughed, and 'Lisbeth laughed so much harder than anybody else, that they all looked up and saw her hanging to the sill; then she dropped suddenly, and forgot that she had to drop so far, and had she not caught by her skirt and hung to the iron railing of the area, nobody knows how she might have been broken and battered and bruised by falling down the area before she had been in London over night.

But she caught to the spikes and her dress was strong; and the children all ran and saw her hanging to the spikes, and somebody lifted her over and stood her on her feet and turned her around to see what she looked like, and then she ran home as soon as she could find out which way to run.

She found out that the big street was nicer than the little one; that the people on the big street were different from the people on the little one. She found out that all the houses and streets in London were not just alike, and she found this out before she had gone to sleep the first night, in the little black room, in the big dirty house, in the little black street. But she was not sorry she had come to London.

She wondered if everybody who lived in London had such lovely dolls as the mistress, such wonderful dolls as the man she had seen. She wondered if there were many children in London who wore such pretty clothes, and who played under such flashing lights, and who had such shining glasses, and tables, and chairs, and wonderful furniture of all kinds in the rooms where they played, and she concluded there must be; this time she did not make a mistake, for there were.

'Lisbeth noticed that her mother, and Gorham, and Dickon, and Trotty did not go in any rooms of the tall house but two; she found that these two were at the top of the house, and that they had nothing to do with those underneath; she found out that there was a great clatter in the house, and in the next houses, as though the whole town were talking; she wondered how she liked it; but she concluded that she liked it very much; she was living in London, how could she help liking it?

Mother looked solemn, and the rooms looked black, and the things were tumbled upside down, and the air was hot, and the noise kept everybody awake, and everybody was half tired to death, and nothing was as bright as it might have been—not even the tallow candle—but they were in London, a hundred miles from the mile-stone; a hundred miles from the church steeple, and the mill, and the dear bit of a house where they had all grown, and rolled, and tumbled; and from the meadows with the flowers sleeping side by side; but they were in London, what did it matter?

Yet if they really were in London, while they slept they dreamed they were playing, and walking and talking under the shadow of the church steeple, and by the mill, and chasing butterflies over the meadows where the flowers were fast asleep, and forgot that the rooms were black, and the air hot, and that things were not as they had been.