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 wouldn't, would we, 'Liza?"
"I should think not, aunt," said the ragged girl. "Neither you nor poor mother nor father ever taught us that. It was hard enough, sometimes, as hard as it was yesterday, and is likely to be to-day, and there wasn't nothing to look forward to, except when I went out once or twice with father, or when he came home after a pretty good day, and we had something for supper, and then we often had to sit up at night to look over all the old clothes and the rags and bottles that he'd got in change for the dolls or the win'mills, and now we get more of the country in summer-time, and I ain't left off goin' to the Sunday-school, have I aunt?"
"No," said the woman, looking down and speaking in a low voice; "I shouldn't leave that off if I was you, and I often wish you could get to be in some place of service with a family, or do something better than live in this rough sort of a way. I a'most wish I'd never took you away after your mother died; but your father went away and little Ben was gone to sea, and I couldn't leave a little one like you to work night after night and day after day at the match-box-making along with other children, but with nobody to look after you." Here the poor woman held down her face, and I thought I saw a tear drop on to the back of the brown grimy hand that leaned upon the bundle of clothes-props. "But it's no good now," she said, rising from the bench where we were sitting. "What must be done to-day is to sell these props and pegs, and to-morrow, if Uncle Dick comes back, and has been pretty fortunate with the cart, we shall get our eggs and bacon, and our beef stew again, 'Liza, and most likely shall have a week or two in Epping Forest, with enough to eat, at all events."
"Stop a minute," said I; "perhaps I might find you a customer for your props and pegs, and I want to hear about the doll-making and the windmills."
The woman and the girl sat down again. It was on a bench upon an open space of ground known as Hackney Downs (a few miles out of London), a great bare-looking waste, where nearly all the grass has been worn off, and there's not much to look at; but where a fine air blows, and where there are a few benches for people to sit upon.
"Well, you see, sir, 'Liza had better tell you about the doll-making," said the woman, "becos she begun to speak of it: not that they was what you'd call dolls, but only a sort of rough flat shape, of a head an' body cut out of match-wood, with eyes and mouth painted for a face, and bits of cotton print, or more often wall-paper, pasted on for a dress, and another bit for a cap; they was for poor people's children, don't you see, as could only afford a ha'penny or a farthing."
"And what about the windmills and the birds?"
"Well, don't you see, sir," says 'Liza—"the windmills was made of just the same bits of flat match-wood, that father brought home and cut into thin strips like. The windmills was like the spokes of a wheel joined together, with folded bits o' wall-paper, and fastened with a round French nail to the end of a stick, so as when the wind took 'em, they used to go round and round. The flying birds was this way—the wheel was a little sort of a hoop, with two wooden spokes to fasten it to the stick, and all the other spokes was made of strings with bits of feathers tied on to 'em, so that when the wind took it they looked like birds flying; as to the fly-ketchers, they was round and square bits o' coloured wall-papers and tissue—put together in strings till they looked like a sort of big Chinese lantern, to entice the flies to settle on 'em. You must have seen such things, sir; but then ours was common ones, of course, to sell for a penny, or a bottle or two, or some old rags."