self on the world. One brother was in the army,
and the other brother, engaged in keeping a wife
and eight children on twenty shillings a week and
unsteady employment, could do nothing for her.
She had been out of London once in her life, to a
place in Essex, twelve miles away, where she had
picked fruit for three weeks " An I was as brown
as a berry w en I come back. You won t b lieve
it, but I was."

The last place in which she had worked was a
coffee-house, hours from seven in the morning till
eleven at night, and for which she had received
five shillings a week and her food. Then she had
fallen sick, and since emerging from the hospital
had been unable to find anything to do. She
wasn t feeling up to much, and the last two nights
had been spent in the street.

Between them they stowed away a prodigious
amount of food, this man and woman, and it was not
till I had duplicated and triplicated their original
orders that they showed signs of easing down.

Once she reached across and felt the texture of
my coat and shirt, and remarked upon the good
clothes the Yanks wore. My rags good clothes ! It
put me to the blush; but, on inspecting them more
closely and on examining the clothes worn by the
man and woman, I began to feel quite well-dressed
and respectable.

[[153]]

p152 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p153w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p154

v?