"It isn't pride, sir," he said; "and, if the children were in absolute want, I'd take your help and thank God for it. It's this way, sir. This week we have just enough money left out of my savings to last us--me and the children--in bread. It has only been bread, and dry bread, it's true; and if when Monday comes I haven't got work, there won't even be bread, for my money will be entirely gone. If you should be this way then, and would look in, and I haven't found work, I will take your help--putting it the way you do, sir--and thank God for it. But when I know of hundreds of little children who haven't had even a piece of bread for days, I can't take----But I thank you kindly. God bless you, sir. I must go now. I hear one of the children calling. Good afternoon." He closed the door in my face--not rudely, but in haste, lest I should see how shaken he was by emotion; and bowing my head, and with my own heart rising strangely in my throat, I turned away. Just for the moment, I did not feel like facing the eyes in the street; so, as a slight rain was falling, I took shelter in a dark passage leading to a court, and stood there out of sight of passers, to collect my thoughts. It was not long before my attention was attracted by a curious sight. A gipsy-like, wolf-faced man was wheeling a child's perambulator, in which, to my astonishment, I saw curled up the figure of a full-grown woman. I recognised the couple at a glance. Walking once along the high road from Epping to London, I had seated myself upon a five-barred gate by the wayside for a quiet smoke. The gate stood between thick hedge-rows, and, as it was set back a little, the folk passing along the road could not see me until they were almost level with the gate. By and by I heard what struck me as a very pretty altercation between a man and a woman who were approaching me slowly, but whom as yet I could not see. The man, as I discovered when they came into sight, was wheeling a perambulator (the same perambulator, in fact) in which were a number of ferns and primrose roots that he was carrying to London to sell. This perambulator the woman was pleading to be allowed to take a turn at pushing, urging that as the man had been up since four in the morning to gather the ferns and primroses, and had had to wheel the perambulator five miles out and five miles back, he must consequently be very tired. He, protesting that he was not tired at all, point-blank refused, declaring that, as she had only just come out of hospital, she must be much more tired than he. And so the petty quarrel continued, until the pair came opposite to the gate, and I saw that she was a sickly, blear-eyed, unlovely woman, and he an unkempt, gipsy-like fellow with lean face and hungry, wolf's eyes.