She is to be found any day between eight in the morning and seven in
the evening, sweeping away in a convulsive, jerky sort of manner, close
to ---- square, near the Foundling. She may be known by her pinched-up
straw bonnet, with a broad, faded, almost colourless ribbon. She has
weak eyes, and wears over them a brownish shade. Her face is tied up,
because of a gathering which she has on her head. She wears a small,
old plaid cloak, a clean checked apron, and a tidy printed gown.
[Illustration: THE CROSSING-SWEEPER THAT HAS BEEN A MAID-SERVANT.
[_From a Photograph._]]
She is rather shy at first, but willing and obliging enough withal; and
she lives down Little ---- Yard, in Great ---- street. The “yard” that
is made like a mousetrap--small at the entrance, but amazingly large
inside, and dilapidated though extensive.
Here are stables and a couple of blind alleys, nameless, or bearing
the same name as the yard itself, and wherein are huddled more people
than one could count in a quarter of an hour, and more children
than one likes to remember,--dirty children, listlessly trailing an
old tin baking-dish, or a worn-out shoe, tied to a piece of string;
sullen children, who turn away in a fit of sleepy anger if spoken to;
screaming children, setting all the parents in the “yard” at defiance;
and quiet children, who are arranging banquets of dirt in the reeking
gutters.
The “yard” is devoted principally to costermongers.
The crossing-sweeper lives in the top-room of a two-storied house, in
the very depth of the blind alley at the end of the yard. She has not
even a room to herself, but pays one shilling a-week for the privilege
of sleeping with a woman who gets her living by selling tapes in the
streets.
“Ah!” says the sweeper, “poor woman, she _has_ a hard time of it; her
husband is in the hospital with a bad leg--in fact, he’s scarcely
ever out. If you could hear that woman cough, you’d never forget it.
She would have had to starve to-day if it hadn’t been for a person
who actually lent her a gown to pledge to raise her stock-money, poor
thing.”
The room in which these people live has a sloping roof, and a
small-paned window on each side. For furniture, there were two chairs
and a shaky, three-legged stool, a deal table, and a bed rolled up
against the wall--nothing else. In one corner of the room lay the last
lump remaining of the seven pounds of coals. In another corner there
were herbs in pans, and two water-bottles without their noses. The most
striking thing in that little room was some crockery, the woman had
managed to save from the wreck of her things; among this, curiously
enough, was a soup-tureen, with its lid not even cracked.
There _was_ a piece of looking-glass--a small three-cornered
piece--forming an almost equilateral triangle,--and the oldest, and
most rubbed and worn-out piece of a mirror that ever escaped the
dust-bin.
The fireplace was a very small one, and on the table were two or
three potatoes and about one-fifth of a red herring, which the poor
street-seller had saved out of her breakfast to serve for her supper.
“Take my solemn word for it, sir,” said the sweeper, “and I wouldn’t
deceive you, that is all she will get besides a cup of weak tea when
she comes home tired at night.”