nd windmills, an'
the fly-ketchers, an' the flyin' birds."

She was a tall thin girl, with a flat dirty face, that would have
been pale, if it had not been burnt to a yellowish brown with the
sun, till it was only a shade lighter than the old battered straw hat
that had let a wisp or two of yellow hair through a great slit in
the back just above the brim. She wore a tattered cotton frock that
had nearly all the pattern washed out, which must have been a long
time before, because it was so stained and worn, so thin that it
would bear no more washing.

The girl was trudging along in a pair of broken boots, two sizes too
large for her, and trying to keep pace with a dark-haired sharp-eyed
little woman, wrapped in a frayed shawl, and with a bonnet that
looked as though it had been picked up from a dust-bin, as perhaps it
had, and while the woman carried half a dozen long sticks, such as
are used to prop up the lines upon which clothes are hung to dry, the
girl held in one hand a bundle of the wooden pegs with which
laundresses fastened the clothes to the lines, and in the other hand
a coil of the line itself.

All these things together could not have been worth much, but it
would be a hard day's work to cut the pegs, and a still harder day's
work to the girl and the woman to sell them all. A good many miles
of streets would have to be walked over, a good many area doors
knocked at, a number of cross people, or people who were afraid of
having something stolen, would shut those doors in their faces, and
perhaps when they had trudged back again to Stratford, a long, long
way on the other side of Whitechapel, they would only have earned a
shilling or two, and would have eaten nothing but a bit of bread,
unless somebody were kind enough to give them some food on purpose to
get rid of them, when they stood whining and saying, "Buy a
clothes-line, buy clothes-pegs, please to buy a clothes-prop," over
and over again.

"They takes us for thieves, I s'pose," said the woman, "and I don't
know that it's to be wondered at, for they reckon us all one with
gipsies, and though our people ain't really gipsies, you know,
they're not unlike 'em, and often we live much the same, and it can't
be denied that there's them amongst us as would lay their hands on
anything they see about; but none of my people would take what don't
belong to 'em either from a passage or behind a door or a street
stall--no, not if we was ever so badly off we wo