CHAPTER IX.
Henry had now much business to attend to, I had none. I used to wander into the back street just as the men’s wives brought them their dinners, so as to look at them. They were not allowed inside, but if the men chose to eat inside they could do so, their wives waiting outside. Six or eight men had their dinners brought, the rest went away. The women most frequently sat on a door-step, or loitered over the gratings up which we used to look at night; or squatted down against the wall. I had once or twice looked up their clothes, but found little inviting, with the exception of a plump little pair of legs which be- longed to a Mrs. Smith. She looked about twenty-six years of age, her husband twenty years older, a good workman but a brutal fellow. He bore a bad char- acter among his fellows, and was thought a brute to his wife. Some said his wife drank; there was often a row in the street between them at dinner-time, he ' used to sit on the door-step and eat his dinner outside, she standing near him, and her legs came at times over a grating. I used to dodge downstairs at times at the workmen’s dinner-hour, and have a look up, and that is how I saw, and began to think of the legs of Mrs. Smith.
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