a-week to pay for rent, an' we must pay it, too, or else turn out.
But I'm lookin' for a less heawse; for we cannot afford to stop here
any longer, wi' what we have comin' in, --that is, if we're to live
at o'." I thought the house they were in was small enough and mean
enough for the poorest creature, and, though it was kept clean, the
neighbourhood was very unwholesome. But this was another instance of
how the unemployed operatives of Lancashire are being driven down
from day to day deeper into the pestilent sinks of life in these
hard times. "This child of my daughter's," continued the old woman,
in a low tone, "this child was born just as they were puttin' my
husband into his coffin, an' wi' one thing an' another, we've had a
deal o' trouble. But one half o'th world doesn't know how tother
lives. My husban' lay ill i' bed three year; an' he suffered to that
degree that he was weary o' life long before it were o'er. At after
we lost him, these bad times coom on, an' neaw, aw think we're poo'd
deawn as nee to th' greawnd as ony body can be. My daughter's
husband went off a-seekin' work just afore that child was born,--an'
we haven't heard from him yet." My friend took care that his visit
should result in lightening the weight of the old woman's troubles a
little.

As we passed the doors of a row of new cottages at the top end of
"Hardy Butts," a respectable old man looked out at one of the
doorways, and said to my friend, "Could aw spake to yo a minute?" We
went in, and found the house remarkably clean, with good cottage
furniture in it. Two neighbour children were peeping in at the open
door. The old man first sent them away, and then, after closing the
door, he pointed to a good-looking young woman who stood blushing at
the entrance of the inner room, with a wet cloth in her hands, and
he said, "Could yo do a bit o' summat to help this lass till sich