'Very 'ard,' she answered, with a weary shake of the head.
'Have you given up selling flowers?'
''Tain't the season for flowers,' she answered; 'wilets won't be in for three months.'
He felt the difficulty of the task he had set himself. 'How do you live when there are no flowers?'
'Any'ow; sometimes I sells matches; I can't tell you 'ow, and that's a fact.'
'But why don't you work?' he inquired, with a bold plunge.
'Work!' she exclaimed. 'What work? I don't know nothin'. But I've been arksed that lots of times. A peeler told me that once, and when I arksed him to get me some work that I could do, he only larfed.'
'Suppose now,' said Mr. Merrywhistle, 'that I were to take you away from this place, and put you somewhere where you could learn dressmaking or needlework.'
She gave him a grateful and surprised look. 'I don't think it'd answer, sir. I knows lots o' gals who tried to git a livin' by needlework, and couldn't do it. I knows some as set up till two o'clock in the mornin', and got up agin at eight, and then couldn't earn enough to git a shoe to their foot. And they couldn't always git work; they'd go for weeks and couldn't git a stitch.'
'Good heavens!' exclaimed Mr. Merrywhistle, who was as ignorant as a child in such matters. 'What did they do then?'