dust into her sieve, "it was the fashion
to wear pink roses in the shoes, as bright as that morsel of ribbon
Sally has just picked out of the dust; yes, and sometimes in the
hair, too, on one side of the head, to set off the white powder and
salve-stuff. I never wore one of these head-dresses myself--don't
throw up the dust so high, John--but I lived only a few doors lower
down from those as did. Don't throw up the dust so high, I tell
'ee--the wind takes it into my face."

"Ah! There! What's that?" suddenly exclaimed little Jem, running as
fast as his poor withered legs would allow him toward a fresh heap,
which had just been shot down on the wharf from a dustman's cart. He
made a dive and a search--then another--then one deeper still. "I'm
sure I saw it!" cried he, and again made a dash with both hands into a
fresh place, and began to distribute the ashes and dust and rubbish on
every side, to the great merriment of all the rest.

"What did you see, Jemmy?" asked old Doubleyear, in a compassionate
tone.

"Oh, I don't know," said the boy, "only it was like a bit of something
made of real gold!"

A fresh burst of laughter from the company assembled followed this
somewhat vague declaration, to which the dustmen added one or two
elegant epithets, expressive of their contempt of the notion that they
could have overlooked a bit of anything valuable in the process of
emptying sundry dust-holes, and carting them away.

"Ah," said one of the sifters, "poor Jem's always a-fancying something
or other good but it never comes."

"Didn't I find three cats this morning?" cried Jem, "two on 'em white
'uns! How you go on!"

"I meant something quite different from the like o' that," said the
other; "I was a-thinking of the rare sights all you three there have
had, one time and another."

The wind having changed, and the day become bright, the party at work
all seemed disposed to be more merry than usual. The foregoing remark
excited the curiosity of several of the sifters, who had recently
joined the "company": the parties alluded to were requested to favor
them with the recital; and though the request was made with only a
half-concealed irony, still it was all in good-natured pleasantry, and
was immediately complied with. Old Doubleyear spoke first:

"I had a bad night of it with the rats some years ago--they runn'd
all over the floor, and over the bed, and one on 'em come'd and guv a
squeak close into my ear--so I couldn'