"You may next ask what we did for clothes—it being very clear that Mother Maggs could not supply us with wearing apparel out of twenty-pence a-week. Well—the fact is we scarcely had any clothes on at all. As for a cap or shoes and stockings, I declare solemnly I never wore any one of those articles from the earliest period of my recollection until I was nine years old. A little ragged frock, and that was all: yes, that was all—summer or winter! But where did even the ragged frock come from? I really hardly know: I am at a loss to say exactly how we did get even that one garment each. Sometimes a child would be taken away by its parents, who might, perhaps, bring it some decent clothing: then the cast-off rags in this case would fall to the lot of the most ragged of those who were left behind. Now and then a slop-seller in the neighbourhood would give one of us some old frock which was useless to himself: and occasionally we would steal one, when we could. You may ask me why we did not steal shoes also? So we did, if an opportunity served: but then we could do without shoes, and the eldest of the lot of us was on those occasions commissioned to sell the plunder at a rag-shop, to afford means to buy a little better food than usually fell in our way. These occurrences were, however, rare—so rare, that they constituted perfect holidays in the hideous monotony of our famished lives;—for the shopkeepers in poor neighbourhoods are constantly on the alert to watch the movements of the juvenile prowlers.