From places such as these people are always moving, whether from an inborn restlessness or a desire to escape their creditors, I cannot say; but one day you see them toiling up and down stairs with the oddest, and most intimate, household and personal belongings clasped in their arms. There is an eddying whirl of dust and straw outside some room door, while from within it comes a persistent sound of hammering. Then only a week or two later you run across the very same people staggering downstairs under the same burdens, or dropping soft bundles over the banisters to the hall below; and pass a widely open door, which shows you an empty room, with fresh stains on the walls, and a fresh irruption of tin-tack holes everywhere; while a perspiring “char-lady” tussles valiantly with the dirt-begrimed floor, for these “flitters” take little or no pride in their surroundings. The army of “char-ladies” in Melbourne is a large one. It is a “legion that never was ’listed”; it has no commander and no regulations; it is managed by no Acts of Parliament; is included in the affairs of no Board; has no fixed minimum wage; in fact, has no protection of any sort, beyond what lies in the tongue of each individual member; though that is, indeed, most often a two-edged sword. But, for all that, these women have one weakness, and that is their strength. If they were not strong enough to work their husbands would be supporting them. If they had not willingly and bravely put their shoulders to the wheel at the time of some crisis, scarcity of employment, or illness, their husbands would never have found out how much more capable they were than they themselves; for, with very few exceptions, the women that one sees scrubbing miles of passages and mountains of stairs, in warehouses and offices and chambers, long before it is light on a winter’s morning, are married women.