You peep through the open doors of little houses, at the fronts of which men and women are bartering old garments for roots or flowers, and through those open doors you see a little sunless spot between two dead walls, by the side of which a small portion of dark damp mould is portioned off, somewhere about a yard in width by eight feet in length, and those are the two garden-beds into which the "penny roots" will be stuck. Here they grow mustard-and-cress, on which the cats fight, and over which Cinderella shakes her doormats, while scores of little black flies play at hide and seek amongst the leaves; nor will all the washing in the world cleanse your salad from these little superfluities. Then, just as the penny wallflower had struck, and the two roots of daisies, which cost per ditto, were beginning to try to open, and the hollyhock looked as if it might live, and the lupin had still a few leaves left, and the Canterbury-bell had one live shoot on,--just as "the garden" was really promising to rear at least one root, the woman that lived in the two-pair back hung a heavy coverlet on the clothes-line (the line itself consisting of six separate pieces), and it broke, and every root broke too, and not one again raised its head. Then Billy was always bowling his hoop, and could never turn it without going on the other bed; and the dustman had placed his basket on the two scarlet runners that were coming up; and where the nasturtiums were set earwigs were ever creeping in and out, and long-bodied wire-worms, that looked up at Billy as if they would like to taste of his little bare legs, and from which he always ran in screaming. Then they had told Mrs. So-and-so to save her soapsuds, to pour on the roots of the little bit of grape-vine which only shewed a leaf here and there; and she, wishing to oblige her landlady, had put the suds in the saucepan again, blown the fire, and emptied the contents, boiling hot, into the hole she made by the grape-vine!