ot appear to thrive so well upon this dietary. They are as
tall as the boys, taller if anything considering the ages, but thin and
skinny, angular and bony. At seven or eight years old the girl's labour
begins. Before that she has been set to mind the baby, or watch the pot,
and to scour about the hedges for sticks for the fire. Now she has not
only to mind the baby, but to nurse it; she carries it about with her in
her arms; and really the infant looks almost as large as herself, and
its weight compels her to lean backwards. She is left at home all day in
charge of the baby, the younger children, and the cottage. Perhaps a
little bread is left for them to eat, but they get nothing more till the
mother returns about half-past four, when, woe be to the girl if the
fire is not lit, and the kettle on. The girl has to fetch the
water--often a hard and tedious task, for many villages have a most
imperfect supply, and you may see the ditches by the roadside dammed up
to yield a little dirty water. She may have to walk half-a-mile to the
brook, and then carry the bucket home as best she may, and repeat the
operation till sufficient has been acquired; and when her mother is
washing, or, still worse, is a washerwoman by profession, this is her
weary trudge all day. Of course there are villages where water is at
hand, and sometimes too much of it. I know a large village where the
brook runs beside the highway, and you have to pass over a "drock," or
small bridge, to get to each of the cottages; but such instances are
rare. The girl has also to walk into the adjacent town and bring back
the bread, particularly if her mother happens to be receiving parish
pay. A little older--at ten or eleven, or twelve--still more skinny and
bony now as a rule, she follows her mother to the fields, and learns to
pick up stones from the young mowing grass, and place them in heaps to
be carted away to mend drinking places for cattle. She learns to beat
clots and spread them with a small prong; she works in the hayfield, and
gleans at the corn-harvest. Gleaning--poetical gleaning--is the most
unpleasant and uncomfortable of labour, tedious, slow, back-aching work;
picking up ear by ear the dropped wheat, searching among the prickly
stubble.

Notwithstanding all her labour, and the hardship she has to
endure--coarse fare, and churlish treatment at the hands of those who
should love her most--the little agricultural girl still retains some of
that natu