"'E's a good sort, our chairman, with a terrible soft spot in his heart for widows. We allus says you have only got to put on a widow's crape and you can get what you like out of him; so Mrs. James upstairs--she's been a milliner, you know--she rigged me out with a little bonnet, and a long crape fall, and a white muslin collar, and she pulled my 'air out loose round my ears, and gave me a 'andkerchief with an inch border of black, and she says, 'There, Mrs. Evans, there ain't a bloke on the Board as won't say you are a deserving case,' and sure enough they went and did just as I told them as good as gold. If I'd my time over again I'd come into the world a widder born." "Just what I says. When Spriggs was alive we were half-clemmed, but nothing could we get from the parish, 'cos they said 'e was an able-bodied man. Spriggs wasn't a lazy man, and 'e did try for work, and he wasn't a drunkard though 'e did fall down under the motor-bus, one of his mates standing 'im a drink on a empty stomach, which we all knows flies quicker to the 'ead. It don't seem right as married ladies a-carrying the kiddies should always go 'ungry, but it's the fact. Since Spriggs was took and the inquest sat on 'im we've had enough, but it's too late to save the little 'un, who was born silly, and Ernest was put away in Darenth, and I always says it was being starved, and the teacher always a-caning of 'im because 'e couldn't learn on an empty stomach." "Best not to marry, I says, and then if 'e falls out of work we can go to the parish and get took in on our own, and you don't 'ave to keep 'im later on. Did you 'ear about Mrs. Moore? Mrs. Moore was our landlady, and 'er 'usband went off about three year ago with the barmaid at 'The Bell'; the perlice tells 'er as she must come in the 'Ouse whilst they looked for 'im, but she said she wouldn't, not if it was ever so, and she was glad to be rid of bad rubbish. So she went to 'er old missis, who lent her money to set up a lodging-house, and, being a good cook, she soon had a 'ouseful, and brings up the three little ones clean and well-behaved like ladies' children. Then the Guardians sent the other day to say as Moore had been taken off to Colney Hatch, mad with drink and wickedness, and she'd got to pay for 'im in there. Well, Mrs. Moore went to appear afore the Board. Lord! we 'alf split ourselves with laughing when she was a-telling us about it; she's got a tongue in 'er head, as cooks have, I notice; the heat affects their tempers; and she went off in one of 'er tantrums and fair frighted them. "'I'm sure you'd like to pay for your 'usband, Mrs. Moore,' says the little man wot sits in the big chair.