late, but when your trade’s in such a state
You hardly know what cash is,
You cannot stop because you get your feet all muddy, cold and wet,
I knew I should be ill, and yet,—
My children needed sashes.
I shivered with the wet and cold, I counted twenty times all told
I’d meant to have my shoes half-soled
And still they’d not been cobbled,
‘I’ll certainly,’ I thought, ‘be sick,’—and then from out the darkness
thick an ancient woman with a stick