I was walking down towards Oxford Street, with my head full of my own affairs, when I heard a shrill, quavering, little voice pipe out close at my elbow: "Flowers, lady! bootifle fresh flowers. Won't you please buy a bunch?" Looking down, I saw beside me the same little girl whom I had previously been watching. The contents of her basket were still undiminished, and she was sitting wearily on a door-step, but now started up to offer me her wares, and try to induce me to become a customer. Though I could do very well without flowers, yet I liked them, and thought they would be a considerable improvement to my dingy little lodging; besides, I pitied the child for the bad luck she had hitherto had that morning; so altogether I had half a mind to buy of her. But then the warning voice of prudence interfered, saying that I had no money to waste on vanities like flowers, and that the more I departed from my strict rule of denying myself every superfluity, the more irksome it would be to keep to it at all. I thought prudence was perfectly right, so I followed her counsel, and replied to the little flower-seller; "No, thank you; I don't want any." She, however, was unwilling to take a refusal, and exclaimed; "Oh, but do _please_ 'ave some, dear lady. Sitch bootifle flowers, they be! Jest one bunch!" I was not going to offend my inward monitor by disregarding her advice, so I merely shook my head, and walked on. For a few steps the child trotted beside me, continuing her importunities, but desisted when she found I was not to be moved. I looked back to see what she was doing when I reached the corner of the street, and saw that she had buried her face in her shawl, and was crying bitterly. I was provoked at such a very unpractical proceeding; and, thinking that at all events a word of good advice would cost me nothing to give, and that perhaps she might be the better for it, I returned to her, and said: "Now, you know, it's excessively silly of you to behave like that, and you'd much better dry your eyes. You're just as likely as not to be losing a chance of a customer while you're crying, and you don't want to do that, do you?" "Oh, _indeed_ but I can't 'elp crying," she replied, between her violent sobs; "it's cos I'se so 'ungry--so dreffle 'ungry." "What makes you so hungry?" said I. "Didn't you have enough breakfast?" "I 'asn't 'ad none at all," she returned. "When mother sent me out this mornin', she said as I shouldn't 'ave no brexshus till I'd got the money for it with these 'ere flowers; and she telled me the same a bit ago, when I met 'er and axed 'er to let in 'ave a penny to buy suthun to eat, cos no one wouldn't buy none of the flowers, and I was jest starved. She sez as it's all my fault for not selling' of 'em, and that if I wasn't idle, I could get rid of 'em fast enuff. But that's not true, for I'se done my best--indeed I 'as!"