This is a hard way to get a living, but the poor people who worked at it were glad to do anything to keep them from starving. The first man or woman who went into the field had the right to make choice of the place where he would work; so he walked quickly over the ground to see if one place looked better than another; and then he set himself to work, knowing that whatever he found would be his own.
Here old cinders, broken crockery, decayed potatoes or pumpkins, were thrown into the same heap with dirty house-cloths, old paper, or any kind of rubbish.
Some of the men who worked hero lived a few miles out of town, and were able to make a better living by keeping a horse and cart, and carrying away for sale so much of the coal as their neighbors wished to sell.
Here it was that poor Dilly had worked for ten long hours. Do you wonder she was tired? Oh, how she longed to jump up and run about, for her limbs ached from being bent under her. When she stopped just for a moment to look about, her father said, "Mind your work, Dilly!" or "Child, let other folks alone, and mind your own business!"
Then the little girl bent over her basket, her face growing every moment more sad, and wondering whether she should have to pick coal every day of her life.
To make the best of it, this was a bad school for Dilly to be brought up in, for she heard men, women, and even children swearing around her; and very often persons quarrelling about the lots they had marked out.
But there was one reason why the child was very anxious to go home. Only the night before God had sent her a baby brother, and she was just allowed to take a peep at him, as he lay on the straw pallet by her mother, before her father called her to go to work.
At last her father halloed to a man going by with an old shaky cart, to draw up and take his coal.
Dilly sprang to her feet, jumping with joy.
"Do keep still, can't ye?" cried Pat, her brother, in a surly tone.