. For an
hour we were forced idly to wait the coming of the measurers, our feet
tingling with the frost which came on the heels of the setting sun. In
the adjoining bin, two women and half-a-dozen children had picked nine
bushels: so that the five bushels the measurers found in our bin
demonstrated that we had done equally well, for the half-dozen children
had ranged from nine to fourteen years of age.

Five bushels! We worked it out to eight-pence ha'penny, or seventeen
cents, for two men working three hours and a half. Fourpence farthing
apiece! a little over a penny an hour! But we were allowed only to "sub"
fivepence of the total sum, though the tally-keeper, short of change,
gave us sixpence. Entreaty was in vain. A hard-luck story could not
move him. He proclaimed loudly that we had received a penny more than
our due, and went his way.

Granting, for the sake of the argument, that we were what we represented
ourselves to be--namely, poor men and broke--then here was out position:
night was coming on; we had had no supper, much less dinner; and we
possessed sixpence between us. I was hungry enough to eat three
sixpenn'orths of food, and so was Bert. One thing was patent. By doing
16.3 per cent. justice to our stomachs, we would expend the sixpence, and
our stomachs would still be gnawing under 83.3 per cent. injustice. Being
broke again, we could sleep under a hedge, which was not so bad, though
the cold would sap an undue portion of what we had eaten. But the morrow
was Sunday, on which we could do no work, though our silly stomachs would
not knock off on that account. Here, then, was the problem: how to get
three meals on Sunday, and two on Monday (for we could not make another
"sub" till Monday evening).

We knew that the casual wards were overcrowded; also, that if we begged
from farmer or villager, there was a large likelihood of our going to
jail for fourteen days. What was to be done? We looked at each other in
despair--

--Not a bit of it. We joyfully thanked God that we were not as other
men, especially hoppers, and went down the road to Maidstone, jingling in
our pockets the half-crowns and florins we had brought from London.

CHAPTER XV--THE SEA WIFE

You might not expect to find the Sea Wife in the heart of Kent, but that
is where I found her, in a mean street, in the poor quarter of Maidstone.
In her window she had no sign of lodgings to let, and persuasion was
necessary