im, she began to speak of her own affairs. With some of these
affairs I was already acquainted. Thus I knew her to be the mother of an
exceptionally large family, so that her case could not be quite typical.
But I also knew that her husband had been in constant work for many
years, so that, in her case, there had been no period when the income
at her disposal ceased altogether, as in the case of so many other women
otherwise less handicapped than she. I was aware, too, that she herself
helped out the family earnings by taking in washing.

To these items of vague knowledge she added a few particulars. As to
income, I learnt that her husband--a labourer on a farm some three miles
away--earned fifteen shillings a week during the winter, and rather more
in the summer months, when he was allowed to do "piece-work." The
piece-work had the further advantage of permitting him to begin so early
in the day--four o'clock was his time in summer--that he usually got
home again by four in the afternoon, and was able to do better than most
men with his garden. Amongst other things, he raised flowers for sale.
He was wont to send to a well-known nursery in Norfolk for his
seeds--china-asters and stocks were his speciality--and he reared his
plants under a little glass "light" which he had made for himself out of
a few old window-sashes. His pains with these flowers were unsparing.
Neighbours laughed at him (so his wife assured me, with some pride)
because he went to the plants down on his hands and knees, smoking each
one with tobacco to clear it from green aphis. He also raised fifty or
sixty sticks of celery every year, which sold for threepence apiece.
Meanwhile he by no means neglected his main business as a
cottage-gardener--namely, the growing of food-crops for home use. By
renting for five shillings a year an extra plot of ground near his
cottage, he was able to keep his large family supplied with potatoes for
quite half the year. It was much to do. They wanted nearly a bushel of
potatoes a week, the wife said; and if that was so, the man was adding,
in the shape of potatoes at half a crown a bushel, the value of more
than three pounds a year to his income. No doubt he grew other
vegetables too--parsnips, carrots, turnips, and some green-stuff--but
these were not mentioned. A little further help was at last coming from
the family, the eldest daughter having begun to pay half the rent out of
her earnings as a servant-girl.

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