purse; but how, is the difficulty. Some hawk fruit and vegetables,
doing a fairly brisk trade on Saturdays, and even on Sunday mornings;
but the most favored Liverpool girls earn their daily bread by selling
newspapers night after night in the streets. A good-looking girl will
secure her regular customers, have her own regular and undisturbed
beat, and will often earn from tenpence to a shilling a night; but the
newspaper beats have to be bought, and often at a high figure, for
competition is very keen, and the coveted corners where the greater
number of gentlemen are to be met that require evening papers are
highly prized.

Bet Granger had been a newspaper girl for a couple of years now; her
mother had saved up money to buy her beat for her; it was one of the
best in the town, and she was always so trim and neat, so comely and
pleasant-looking, and her papers so clean and crisp and neatly cut,
that she did a fair trade, and largely helped to support her mother
and little brothers. Her trade occupied her for a couple of hours every
evening. In the morning, as the mood took her, she helped her mother
with plain needlework--Mrs. Granger worked for a wholesale shop at the
usual shop prices--or she went down to the docks.

Every Liverpool girl is fond of watching the ships as they come in or
go out; they connect her with the outer life, with the far-away
world--they give her a pleasing and ever-recurring sense of excitement
and exhilaration; but, as a rule, they never implant in her breast
that fever to be off and away which so soon affects the Liverpool boy.

Bet liked to watch the ships. She would stand erect and almost haughty
in her bearing, often quite close to the edge of the quays, speaking
very few words, and making scarcely any acquaintances, but thinking