k. It evidently
requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the
day's dinner-money in the purchase of the stale tarts so temptingly
exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks' doors; but a consciousness of
their own importance and the receipt of seven shillings a-week, with the
prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they
accordingly put their hats a little more on one side, and look under the
bonnets of all the milliners' and stay-makers' apprentices they
meet--poor girls!--the hardest worked, the worst paid, and too often, the
worst used class of the community.

Eleven o'clock, and a new set of people fill the streets. The goods in
the shop-windows are invitingly arranged; the shopmen in their white
neckerchiefs and spruce coats, look as it they couldn't clean a window if
their lives depended on it; the carts have disappeared from
Covent-garden; the waggoners have returned, and the costermongers
repaired to their ordinary 'beats' in the suburbs; clerks are at their
offices, and gigs, cabs, omnibuses, and saddle-horses, are conveying
their masters to the same destination. The streets are thronged with a
vast concourse of people, gay and shabby, rich and poor, idle and
industrious; and we come to the heat, bustle, and activity of NOON.

CHAPTER II--THE STREETS--NIGHT

But the streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their
glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter's night, when there
is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy,
without cleansing it of any of its impurities; and when the heavy lazy
mist, which hangs over every object, makes the gas-lamps look brighter,
and the brilliantly-lighted shops more splendid, from the contrast they
present to the darkness around. All the people who are at home on such a
night as this, seem disposed to make themselves as snug and comfortable
as possible; and the passengers in the streets have excellent reason to
envy the fortunate individuals who are seated by their own firesides.

In the larger and better kind of streets, dining parlour curtains are
closely drawn, kitchen fires blaze brightly up, and savoury steams of hot
dinners salute the nostrils of the hungry wayfarer, as he plods wearily
by the area railings. In the suburbs, the muffin boy rings his way down
the little street, much more slowly than he is wont to do; for Mrs.
Macklin, of No. 4, has no sooner opened her littl