A woman of about thirty, dressed in widow's weeds, and far advanced in the family way, sate next to the little deformity. She had never been married, but was possessed of five children, who were now playing in one corner of the room. She was accustomed to take her stand in some public thoroughfare, with her children drawn up in a row; and this game she had carried on, at the time of which we are writing, for four years—rather a long period of widowhood. She disliked fine weather, because the hearts of the charitable are more easily touched by the spectacle of a "destitute family" standing in the midst of a pouring rain or on the snow; and she reckoned that in bad weather she could earn eight or nine shillings a-day. Every Saturday night she took her station in some poor neighbourhood—such as Church Street (Bethnal Green), Leather Lane, Lambeth Marsh, High Street (St. Giles's), or Clare Market; and on those occasions she often obtained as much as fifteen shillings. But then, as she very justly observed, Sunday was a day of rest; and so it was indeed to her—for she was in the habit of getting so awfully drunk every Saturday night, after her return home to Castle Street, that she was compelled to lie in bed all the next day until three or four o'clock, when she rose to a good dinner. She always kept herself and children remarkably neat and clean—not from any principle, but as a matter of calculation. Charitable people thought she was a good mother, and a deserving though distressed woman; and alms poured in upon her. When questioned by any individual who relieved her, she would reply that "her husband was a bricklayer who had fallen off a ladder and killed himself six weeks ago;" or that "he was an honest, hard-working man whose career was suddenly cut short by his being run over by a gentleman's carriage:" or some such tale. Next to her sate a young woman who was wont to take her stand in the evening, after dusk, close by the entrance to Somerset House. In the summer she would hold a few flowers in her hand: in the winter, laces and bobbins; and her invariable cry was "Oh! pray, dear sir"——or "dear lady," as the case might be——"pray do assist me: I have only this moment come out of the hospital, and have nowhere to sleep." By these means she realized her five shillings in three or four hours, and hastened back to Castle Street to spend them with a worthless fellow—her paramour.