"Any little biby could read _that_! You can't read 'fammy-lies,' nor yet 'dyly.' It's no use your tryin'." But Lizarann felt unhappy, and yearned for Culture, and tried very hard to read "families" and "daily" on each side of "provided," while Bridgetticks gave attention to a doll's camp on the doorstep. But "families" is very hard to read--you know it is!--and Lizarann quite forgot to put back a beautiful piece of stick-liquorice in her mouth during her efforts to master it. Anybody would have thought, to look along Tallack Street, where this colloquy took place, that the announcement on Arthurses cart "Families provided daily" was followed out literally by Arthurs, and that that Trust or Syndicate was driving a brisk trade in the families it provided daily. To-day was a holiday at the Board school, and the whole street teemed with prams. And in every pram was one biby, or more, assimilating Arthurses milk. But they themselves had not been provided by Arthurs; merely the milk. The prams were nearly the only vehicles in Tallack Street, which ran straight acrost from the railway-arch to the 'Igh Road, parallel-like, as you might say, to Trott Street. Even Arthurses cart wasn't a real cart, only drove by hand. A nearer approach to an ideal was the coal, which came behind a horse, and sold itself for a shillin' a hundred, more or less, accordin' as the season. The scales, they'd weigh down to twenty-eight pound, if you didn't want to have capital lying idle; but then it was a sight easier to be cheated at that, and you could always bring two coal-scuttles, and if one of 'em _was_ wore through, why, a stout bit of brown paper, coverin' in the hole, and there you were! Because the dropping of fragments of coal on the pavement was not only wasteful, but giv' them boys something to aim with. Ammunition was scarce, owing to the way the road was kep'; similar, them boys took every opportunity. There were two other vehicles that were known to Tallack Street. One came every day with a drum, and sold vegetables. The proprietor had made himself hoarse, many years since, with shouting about the freshness of his stock between the outbreaks on the drum, and, as life advanced and his lung-power declined, the drum-performances encroached on the oratory. This suited a large majority of the inhabitants, conveying a sense of Life--was, in fact, thought almost equal to the Play--by those who had been to it--and was so appreciated by Lizarann and Bridgetticks that they would petition to be allowed to stand in contact with the drum to feel the noise inside of 'em like.