Upon my word, I do really believe that if there was a pin to choose between Leicester-square and our back garden, certainly the Square had the best of it. For the fact of it was, that stupid, though respected, mother of mine would go making me believe when first we came to our house, that the air up in our neighbourhood was pure enough to grow anything, and that with the ground we had at the back of us, we might very easily get enough vegetables to keep the family all the year round, adding, then we should be sure to have them so sweet, and fresh, and good. Sweet, and fresh, and good, indeed!--upon my word! the whole of our first year’s crop consisted of only about four nasty, smutty, two-penny-halfpenny cabbages, that must have cost us a matter of ten shillings a piece if they did a farthing--and they were all eaten away, and their leaves were as yellow and full of holes as the seat of a cane-bottomed chair; so that I began to find out, after we had been gardening away fit to kill ourselves, for I can’t say how long, that really and truly we were doing nothing more than keeping a small preserve of slugs, snails, and caterpillars. Do what I would, and slave as I might, I could _not_ keep the filthy things away. Cupful after cupful have I taken off the plants of a morning, and yet the next day there they were again as thick as ever. I declare the better part of my day used to be occupied all through the summer, with looking after those plaguy greens, (which, water them as I would, I could not get to be anything equal in colour to the caterpillars that were always in them,) till, ’pon my word, my poor neck was as sunburnt as ginger.