The flower market is very pretty, and it is a treat to go there. If you were grown up and had been to a ball in London, you might see, when you were coming back in the early morning, a cart piled high with cabbages, and a sleepy-looking man sitting on the shafts, while a dim lantern hung beside him. This is one of the carts bringing in the vegetables that London wants for her dinner next day. London itself is like a great ogre--eating, always eating. You remember the story of the giant who used to be quiet so long as the people brought him enough to eat? And how all the people in the country used to work day and night to bring in cartloads of things, for fear if they allowed him to go hungry he would eat them instead? The giant could swallow up those cartloads as if they were spoonfuls. And so it is with London. Men work day and night bringing, always bringing, cartloads of meat and fruit and vegetables, and London swallows them all up; and next day there are more carts and more food from the country, and so it goes on always. In the middle of the night, when most people are fast asleep, the man who wants to sell his flowers or vegetables at Covent Garden Market must be up and out. In the dim light he harnesses his horse and lights his lamp. Perhaps his faithful dog watches him, and runs about quite pleased to be going for a walk, even if it is in the middle of the night. Then the man starts off on his long, slow journey into London. Mile after mile over muddy or dusty roads, through villages where everyone is asleep, where not even a dog barks, on and on to London. It may be very cold, and the horse only goes slowly, so it cannot be very comfortable; but this is the man's work, and he must do it. Perhaps the cartman has a little boy, and takes him too, and you see the little boy, when the cart is coming back empty in the morning, lying sound asleep on the straw dead tired, while his father drives home. All the carts gather up to the market, and then they are unloaded. One brings vegetables, and another fruit, and another flowers, and by two o'clock everything is in its place and ready to be sold. Then the buyers come--shop people again, greengrocers and fruiterers--and they look round and try to get the best they can at the lowest prices.