Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled. Besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some kind of washing in very dirty water. They all looked up at us as we came in, and the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire as if to hide her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome.

Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of determination and talking loudly about the untidy habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have been tidy in such a place), led us into a cottage. We nearly filled the damp ground-floor room. Besides ourselves, there were a woman with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby; a man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some washing in very dirty water. They all looked up as we came in, and the woman turned her face towards the fire as if to hide her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome.
