weather with flowers. I’d do needlework, so as to be at home with them, but, oh! it’s heart-breaking work. It was hard enough, I dare say, before there were sewing machines, but it’s dreadful now, and you may work day and night almost to live. Just fancy being paid so many farthings for making a garment that has taken hours, while the poor children have been fretful and miserably cooped up in this one room – half-a-crown a week I pay for it, because it’s one of the most decent, and I like being up at the top of the house, here, for one seems to get a little more fresh air, even if it’s smoky. The poor bairns didn’t seem to breathe down below there, and grew more white and pasty-looking every day till I got them up here.
“I’m not particular what I sell as long as it is in season and people will buy. But it’s no matter what one takes to, there’s scores about selling the very same thing, and it’s quite a fight sometimes for the next penny. Flowers always did, and I suppose always will, sell well, and I do the best I can with mine by sprinkling and keeping them fresh, and setting them out as tasty as I can, so as to catch people’s eyes. There’s very few people, no matter how hard they are, but what you can make the way to their hearts with a pretty, sweet-smelling blossom or two. I suppose as God made them, He’s given them that power, and I’ve had your hard City men, who make money all the day long, stop in front of my basket with the lines softening out of their faces, and a brightness coming into their eyes that seems to stop for long enough; and if they buy, say, a bunch of violets or a few wallflowers, they’ll stop about them, not picking and choosing and beating you down, but pretending to, so that they may hang about the basket, and smell them, and look at their simple beauty.
“I keep at flowers all I can, for it’s a good trade for a poor woman like me; and even in that one gets one’s regular customers. One simple-looking boy comes and buys rosebuds of me; and I smile to myself, sadly enough though, for it reminds me of old times, when one’s eyes were bright, and one’s face was smooth and fresh-coloured, and Tom used to say – Well, never mind, ma’am, I won’t bother you with that nonsense; but this customer of mine buys those rosebuds to give to some proud girl, I feel sure – one as will never look at him; and the poor fellow always sighs when he buys his roses. One gentleman buys a bunch regularly to take home to his wife; another for his children; and work-girls love them dearly, to keep them in water in their rooms. I call regular at one house, and somehow I always make up my best bunch for there. You see, it’s for a sick girl who has been lying months and months, and they tell me she will never get better; while the thought of her seems to remind me of my own trouble, and I feel sorry for her; and after the servant has taken the sweet, fresh bunch, and paid me for it, I seem to picture it all – the poor invalid smiling and brightening up at the sight of the pretty flowers, as she holds out her poor, thin, white hands for them, and perhaps kisses them, and holds them to her poor pale face. I don’t know that she does – I only seem to fancy it is so.
“Rich and poor, ma’am, all alike, and ready to be customers for a few flowers; and I often felt cut to see the eager looks some poor creatures give at them, and how ready they are to part with almost their last coin to get hold of them. Why, I’ve known boys who had perhaps a penny to get a bit of bread-and-butter for their tea come and spend it with me; and once, bad off as I was myself, I could not take the longing little fellow’s penny, but gave him the flowers.
“You see, it seems to come into the hearts of all God’s creatures, I think, to love the bright country; and when tiny bits of it like are held before them, it sets them longing, and makes them eager to get them. But it’s hard work at times to know what to do, for flowers fade and die, and after one has come down to the lavender, and cried that round the streets, it’s getting a hard matter to know what to sell. I’ve come home here o’ nights before now, and gone down on my knees by that bit of a bed and cried to be taught what to do next to get a bit of bread for the little ones, whom I’ve found huddled together fast asleep – after crying, perhaps, for long enough because mother did not come home. And shall I tell you why mother did not come home, ma’am? Well, it was because she had tramped hour after hour, street after street, to find a customer, and then came home disappointed and heart-sick. Then, perhaps it would be the crying, or perhaps better thoughts came into one’s ignorant heart; but I’ve got up better, and somehow the sun would shine a bit for me the next day, so that I could make a few pence; and one way and another we manage to live, while others starve.”
Was it one’s heart that had grown heavier with listening to the widow’s sorrows? Perhaps so; for certainly the stairs creaked more loudly as I went down past misery staring from more than one lair, hollow-eyed and gaunt, as though speaking as the flower-selling widow; and then I stood once more in the court, threaded my way past the children that flocked there, several of whom were fishing with bits of string for the lost coin, and, on reaching the embouchure, encountered young Trousers, who grinned a welcome as I passed, and ceased printing black feet upon the pavement.
“I ain’t spint that there copper,” he shouted after me.
“Haven’t you?” I said. “What shall you do with it, my man?”
“Give it to mother,” said the grimy young rascal, with an earnestness that there was no mistaking; and I passed on, thinking what a fine lad that little fellow would have made if planted in different soil with some one to carefully watch him and tend.
Chapter Five.
Ruth’s Stepfather
I feel a shrinking – a strange kind of hesitation in narrating some of these adventures lest the reader should think me full of egotism, and that I told of my little charities as if proud of what I had done. Pray chase any such idea from your minds, for I can honestly say that no feeling of vanity ever existed in mine. I am merely relating the pleasures of my life, my rambles amongst weeds and flowers – the weeds and sad lined blossoms of our town.
I was much troubled in my mind as to how I could most help the widow of Burt’s Buildings, and I knew that I could best assist her by helping her to help herself. One of her great troubles was that she had to leave her little ones so long, and a strange sense of pain had shot through me as she spoke of finding them huddled together as they had cried themselves to sleep. What could I do then?
The thought came: A sewing machine! that which had been her enemy to be now her friend; and the next morning I was in one of our busiest streets in front of a large establishment within whose plate-glass doors I saw a pretty lady-like young woman, busy winding thread upon one of some dozen of the ingenious little pieces of mechanism, and upon stating my wants she led me up to a bluff, sharp-looking, grey man whose face seemed to soften as she spoke before returning to her task.
“Sewing machine ma’am, eh?” he said, eyeing me very sharply. “Own use?”
“No,” I said, “I want it for a poor woman to enable her to earn her living.”
“Instalments, ma’am,” he said sharply.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Want to pay for it by instalments?” he said.
“Oh! no, I will pay for it at once, and you can deliver it to her.”
“Oh,” he said smiling, “that’s twenty per cent, discount.”
I looked at him wonderingly, for I did not know what twenty per cent discount might be.
“I always take twenty per cent discount off these machines,” he said, and I left pleasurably impressed by his ways and those of the young girl he introduced to me as his daughter, and that little new machine was the first of several in which I had Mr Smith’s kind co-operation and advice in what were doubtful cases.
The result was a warm intimacy, in the course of which he told me his little history and that of his daughter –
