Yes, it was possible, but for the little one, her grandchild. Folks
will not employ old women burdened with grandchildren.

You fair, dainty ladies, who would never know it was morning if
somebody did not enter to pull up the blind and tell you so! You do
well not to venture out in this magic morning light. You would look
so plain--almost ugly, by the side of these beautiful women.

It is curious the attraction the Church has always possessed for the
marketing classes. Christ drove them from the Temple, but still, in
every continental city, they cluster round its outer walls. It makes
a charming picture on a sunny morning, the great cathedral with its
massive shadow forming the background; splashed about its feet, like
a parterre of gay flowers around the trunk of some old tree, the
women, young girls in their many coloured costumes, sitting before
their piled-up baskets of green vegetables, of shining fruits.

In Brussels the chief market is held on the Grande Place. The great
gilded houses have looked down upon much the same scene every morning
these four hundred years. In summer time it commences about half-
past four; by five o'clock it is a roaring hive, the great city round
about still sleeping.

Here comes the thrifty housewife of the poor, to whom the difference
of a tenth of a penny in the price of a cabbage is all-important, and
the much harassed keeper of the petty pension. There are houses in
Brussels where they will feed you, light you, sleep you, wait on you,
for two francs a day. Withered old ladies, ancient governesses, who
will teach you for forty centimes an hour, gather round these
ricketty tables, wolf up the thin soup, grumble at the watery coffee,