_M. P_. Witnesses! how can I call witnesses to swear that I didn't steal
the loaves?

_J. N_. Well, do you wish to question the witnesses? You have a right
to.

_M. P_. Much good that would be! Would you listen to me if I did? I
didn't steal the loaves; but I wanted them, I can tell you that. But
it's all one; you are going to have it so, and I might as well have
stolen a diamond necklace for all the justice I shall get here. What's
the odds? It's of a piece with the rest of my life for the last three
years. My husband was a handsome young countryman once, God help us! He
could live on ten shillings a-week before he married me; let alone that
he could pick up things here and there. Rabbits and hares some of them,
as why should he not? And I could earn a little too; it was not so bad
there. And then and for long the place was a pretty place, the little
grey cottage among the trees, if the cupboard hadn't been so bare; one
can't live on flowers and nightingale's songs. Then the children came
brisk, and the wages came slack; and the farmer got the new
reaping-machine, and my binding came to an end; and topping turnips for a
few days in the foggy November mornings don't bring you in much, even
when you havn't just had a baby. And the skim milk was long ago gone,
and the leasing, and the sack of tail-wheat, and the cheap cheeses almost
for nothing, and the hedge-clippings, and it was just the bare ten
shillings a-week. So at last, when we had heard enough of eighteen
shillings a-week up in London, and we scarce knew what London meant,
though we knew well enough what ten shillings a-week in the country
meant, we said we'd go to London and try it there; and it had been a good
harvest, quickly saved, which made it bad for us poor folk, as there was