knows it now, don't ye?"

"I ain't sure yet. I ain't had time to consider."

After that the subject changed. I heard the woman say: "I've had six
gals an' only one boy--one out o' seven. Alice is out courtin'"; and
then they seemed to get on to the question of ways and means. The last
words that reached me were "Fivepence ... tuppence-ha'penny;" but still,
when I could no longer catch any details at all, the voices continued to
sound pleasantly good-tempered.

IV

MANIFOLD TROUBLES

Besides the unrelieved hardness of daily life--the need, which never
lifts from them, of making shift and doing all things for
themselves--there has always been another influence at work upon my
neighbours, leaving its indelible mark on them. Almost from infancy
onwards, in a most personal and intimate way, they are familiar with
harrowing experiences of calamity such as people who employ them are
largely able to escape. The little children are not exempt. There being
no nursemaids to take care of the children while fathers and mothers are
busy, the tiniest are often entrusted to the perilous charge of others
not quite so tiny, and occasionally they come to grief. Then too often
the older children, who are themselves more secure for a few years, are
eyewitnesses of occurrences such as more fortunate boys and girls are
hardly allowed even to hear of. Nor is it only with the gory or horrible
disaster that the people thus become too early acquainted. The
nauseating details of sickness are better known and more openly
discussed in the cottage than in comfortable middle-class homes. For it
is all such a crowded business--that of living in these cramped
dwellings. Besides, the injured and the sick, absorbed in the interest
of their ailments, are amiably willing to give others an opportunity of
sharing it. The disorder or the disablement is thus almost a family
possession. An elderly man, who had offered to show me a terrible ulcer
on his leg, smiled at my squeamishness, as if he pitied me, when I
declined the privilege. "Why, the little un," he said, pointing to a
four-year-old girl on the floor, "the little un rolls the bandage for me
every evening, because I dresses'n here before the fire." That is the
way in the labourer's cottage. Even where privacy is attempted for the
sufferer's sake there is no refuge for the family from the evidence of
suffering. The young people in one room may hardly avoid knowing and
hearing where a man i