, then a crowd. The wonder was, at first, to see
a tradesman's window open, but it was a rare thing soon to see one
closed; then, smoke rose slowly from the chimneys, and sashes were
thrown up to let in air, and doors were opened, and servant girls,
looking lazily in all directions but their brooms, scattered brown
clouds of dust into the eyes of shrinking passengers, or listened
disconsolately to milkmen who spoke of country fairs, and told of
waggons in the mews, with awnings and all things complete, and gallant
swains to boot, which another hour would see upon their journey.

This quarter passed, they came upon the haunts of commerce and great
traffic, where many people were resorting, and business was already
rife. The old man looked about him with a startled and bewildered
gaze, for these were places that he hoped to shun. He pressed his
finger on his lip, and drew the child along by narrow courts and
winding ways, nor did he seem at ease until they had left it far
behind, often casting a backward look towards it, murmuring that ruin
and self-murder were crouching in every street, and would follow if
they scented them; and that they could not fly too fast.

Again this quarter passed, they came upon a straggling neighbourhood,
where the mean houses parcelled off in rooms, and windows patched with
rags and paper, told of the populous poverty that sheltered there. The
shops sold goods that only poverty could buy, and sellers and buyers
were pinched and griped alike. Here were poor streets where faded
gentility essayed with scanty space and shipwrecked means to make its
last feeble stand, but tax-gatherer and creditor came there as
elsewhere, and the poverty that yet faintly struggled was hardly less
squalid and manifest than that which had long ago submitted and given
up the game.

This was a wide, wide track--for the humble followers of the camp of
wealth pitch their tents round about it for many a mile--but its
character was still the same. Damp rotten houses, many to let, many
yet building, many half-built and mouldering away--lodgings, where it
would be hard to tell which needed pity most, those who let or those
who came to take--children, scantily fed and clothed, spread over every
street, and sprawling in the dust--scolding mothers, stamping their
slipshod feet with noisy threats upon the pavement--shabby fathers,
hurrying with dispirited looks to the occupation which brought them
'daily bread' and litt