s often locked out by her parents, who go to work and
leave her in charge of her still smaller brothers and sisters. They play
about the hedges and ditches, and very rarely come to any harm. In autumn
their little fingers are employed picking up the acorns fallen from the
oaks, for which the formers pay so much per bushel. In spring is their
happiest time. The joy of life--the warm sunshine and pleasant breeze of
spring--is not wholly lost upon them, despite their hard fare, and the not
very affectionate treatment they receive at home. Such a girl may then be
seen sitting under a willow beside the brook, with her charges around
her--the little brother that can just toddle, the baby that can but crawl
and crow in the green fresh grass. Between them lies a whole pile of
flowers--dandelion stems made into rings, and the rings joined together so
as to form a chain, rushes plaited, blue-bells, cowslips tied up in balls,
and cowslips loose, their yellow petals scattered over the sward.

The brook flows murmuring by, with an occasional splash, as a water-rat
dives from the bank or a fish rises to an insect. The children weave their
flowers and chant some old doggrel rhymes with little or no meaning. Long
afterwards that girl will retain an unconscious memory of the scene, when,
wheeling her employer's children out on some suburban road, she seeks a
green meadow and makes a cowslip ball for the delighted infants. In summer
they go down to the hay-field, but dare not meddle with the hay, which the
bailiff does not like to see disturbed; they remain under the shadow of
the hedge. In autumn they search for the berries, like the birds, nibbling
the hips and haws, tasting crabs and sloes, or feasting on the fruit of a
hazel-bush.

Be it spring or summer, autumn or winter, wherever the child may be, her
eyes are ever on the watch to find a dead stick or a broken branch, too
heavy to lift, but which may be dragged behind, in order to feed the
cottage fire at night. That is her first duty as a child; if she remains
in the hamlet that will be her duty through life, and to the last, as an
aged woman. So in London, round the purlieus of buildings in the course of
erection--even in the central thoroughfares, in busy Fleet
Street--children hang about the temporary hoardings, and pick up the chips
and splinters of deal. But the latter have not the pleasure of the
blue-bells and cowslips, nor even of the hips and haws, nor does the fresh
pure