e flower-girls sit
here all day. They don't seem to mind the rain or wet at all; they are
quite used to it. They don't pay anything for being here; but they are
very angry if another comes and takes their place, and the girl or woman
to whom it belongs will perhaps fight the newcomer, and then the
policeman has to come and separate them.

Some of these places where the flower-women sit are made quite beautiful
by the baskets of flowers. In the spring, when the daffodils are out, it
looks as if a patch of sunshine had fallen from the sky into the dark
street. But all these flowers don't come from England. A great many are
grown abroad, and sent to Covent Garden Market from over the sea.

At the market, when the cartman has finished arranging his vegetables,
he goes to a coffee-stall. There are many there, and perhaps he gets a
great cup of strong coffee and an immense hunch of bread or cake for
breakfast, or perhaps he goes to the public-house at the corner; but at
any rate, before he goes back, he has something to eat, and then he
piles up his baskets, now empty, in which he brought the things and
starts off home. One of the most surprising things at Covent Garden is
the quantities of oranges that come there--boxes and boxes of oranges.
These have been brought to England up the river in ships, and the men,
with great cushions on their heads, carry them to the markets. The
cushion is to make it soft and prevent the hard wood of the box hurting
their heads, and they carry a huge boxful in this way more easily than
you or I would carry a book.

Long years ago, when London consisted of only a few houses and
Westminster of another few houses, this market, which is now in the
middle of streets, was really a garden, and it belonged to a convent for
nuns, and it is strange that it should be like a garden still with all
its fruit and flowers, though now it is part of a great town.

CHAPTER VII

CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS

We have seen children rich and children poor, children at work and
children at play, but we have not yet seen any of the poor little
children who cannot run about as others do, who have to be still, and
who very often suffer pain. A lady began a school for poor children who
were ill. She had been visiting poor people, and she had found out that
sometimes a mother had to leave her sick child the whole day long alone
in one dark room. And very often these children were not ill for a
little time only, as