At the market, when the cartman has finished arranging his vegetables, he goes to a coffee-stall. There are many there, and perhaps he gets a great cup of strong coffee and an immense hunch of bread or cake for breakfast, or perhaps he goes to the public-house at the corner; but at any rate, before he goes back, he has something to eat, and then he piles up his baskets, now empty, in which he brought the things and starts off home. One of the most surprising things at Covent Garden is the quantities of oranges that come there--boxes and boxes of oranges. These have been brought to England up the river in ships, and the men, with great cushions on their heads, carry them to the markets. The cushion is to make it soft and prevent the hard wood of the box hurting their heads, and they carry a huge boxful in this way more easily than you or I would carry a book. Long years ago, when London consisted of only a few houses and Westminster of another few houses, this market, which is now in the middle of streets, was really a garden, and it belonged to a convent for nuns, and it is strange that it should be like a garden still with all its fruit and flowers, though now it is part of a great town. CHAPTER VII CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS We have seen children rich and children poor, children at work and children at play, but we have not yet seen any of the poor little children who cannot run about as others do, who have to be still, and who very often suffer pain. A lady began a school for poor children who were ill. She had been visiting poor people, and she had found out that sometimes a mother had to leave her sick child the whole day long alone in one dark room. And very often these children were not ill for a little time only, as any of you might be, but ill always from babyhood, without any hope of getting well. To take one case, little Beatrice Annie Jones had a mother who was a widow, and used to go out to scrub people's floors and clean the houses; that is what is called being a charwoman. She had sometimes to go quite a long way to her work, and could not come back in the middle of the day for dinner; so in the morning before she went she used to give Beatrice Annie a bit of bread and an egg, if she had enough money to buy one, and a few sticks, and a little pan with water in it. Then she used to tidy up the room and go away, leaving the child alone. The door must be locked, for a thief might come in and steal the few bits of things there were. The window was dirty and very high up; Beatrice Annie could only see out of it by climbing on a rickety chair, and she could not stand there long, for it hurt her legs and back, for they were not like other little girls' legs and back, but weak and painful, so that she used to drag herself about the floor on all fours, like a baby, rather than walk, even though she was seven years old. The room she and her mother lived in was up many,