Chapter 4 - Page 2

the steps of large houses, and had heard that the usual payment
was one penny for the task. After walking about for some time she began
timidly ringing the area bells of houses where the steps had not yet been
cleaned, and asking if a girl was wanted to do them. Almost invariably
she was sent away with an emphatic "No!" from a servant angry at being
disturbed; but twice again during that day she received a penny for step-
cleaning, so that she had earned threepence. After midday, finding she
could get no more work, and feeling faint with hunger, she bought a penny
loaf, and going to a shelter facing the fountains in Kensington Gardens,
made her modest dinner, and rested afterwards until it was time to return
to Dudley Grove.

In the evening as she sat by the fire after tea she gave an account of
her success, and exhibited the two remaining pence, offering them to the
poor woman who had sheltered her.

She only shook her head. "You'll maybe want something to eat to-morrow,"
she said; and presently continued, "Step-cleaning ain't no good. There's
too many at it. And you a growing girl, and always hungry, you'd starve
at it. Saturdays is not bad, because there's many houses where they only
clean the steps once a week, and they has a girl to do it. You might make
sixpence or a shilling on a Saturday. But other days is bad. You can't
live at it. There's nothing you can do to live."

Fan was profoundly discouraged; but thinking over the subject, she
remembered that she had seen other girls out on the same quest as herself
that day, and though all of them had a dirty draggled look, as was
natural considering the nature of the work, some of them, at all events,
looked well-fed, healthy, and not unhappy, and this had made her more
hopeful. At last she said:

"If other girls get their living at it, why can't I? If I could make
sixpence a day, couldn't I live on that?"

"No, nor yet on ninepence, nor yet on a shilling. You're a tall growing
girl, and you ain't strong, and you are hungry, and want your dinner in
the middle of the day; and if you don't get it, you'll be down ill, and
then what'll you do? You can't do it on sixpence, nor yet on a shilling,
because you've got no home to go to, and must pay for a room; and no one
to find you clothes and shoes, you must buy them. Them girls you see are
stronger than you, and have homes to go to, and don't go about like you
to find steps to clean, but go to the houses they know, where they always
clean the steps. And they don't get only a penny; they get tuppence, and
make a shilling a day--some of them as knows many houses; and on
Saturdays they make more'n three shillings. But you can't do it, because
you don't