Casting my eyes before me I observed another poor fellow, at the crossing of another street, plying his broom to the mud very nimbly (or rather passing it over, just above the top of the mud), whilst his eye was fixed intently upon me, whom he had no doubt seen patronizing the lad whom I had passed. I dodged this poor fellow by crossing the street to the right, and as I approached the opposite pavement I fell into the hands of a young woman in rags, who placed herself before me in the most beseeching attitude, holding on her arm a half-clad and sickly babe, which she was pinching on one of its legs to make it cry, whilst she supplicated me for aid. I listened to her pitiable lamentations a moment, and in reproaching her for her cruelty in exposing the life of her little infant for the purpose of extorting alms, I asked her why she did not make her husband take care of her and her child? "Oh, my kind sir," said she, "I give you my honour I've got no husband; I have no good opinion of those husbands." "Then I am glad you have informed me," said I; "you belong to a class of women whom I will not give to." "Oh, but, kind sir, you mistake me; I am not a bad woman--I am _not_ a bad woman--I assure you! I am a decent woman, and God knows it: the child is not mine; it is only one that I hires, and I's obliged to pay eighteen pence a day for it; which is as true as God's holy writ; that's what it is." "Then," said I, "you are a wretch, to keep that innocent little thing here in the cold; and, instead of alms, you deserve to be handed over to the police." She gave me many hard names as I was stepping into a cab which I had beckoned up and directed to drive me to Ibbotson's Hotel, in Vere-street. "Where, sir?" asked the cab-driver as he mounted his seat. "Vy, sir, didn't you ear the gentleman?" said a man with a large bronze medal hanging on his breast, who had one hand on the door; "drive im to Hibbotson's Otel, Were-street, Hoxford-street." "Who are you?" said I, as we were moving off, and he held the door open with one hand and his hat raised with the other; "what do you want?" "I'm the vaterman, sir; you'll recollect the vaterman?" "Yes, I'll not forget you in a long time." So I shut the door without giving the poor man his ha'penny, not knowing the usual custom yet, and too much pressed for time to learn it at that moment.