of work they possessed nothing, had nothing to look forward to save more work. And they were contented. They expected nothing else, desired nothing else.
They lived simply. Their wants were few,—a pint of beer at the end of the day, sipped in the semi-subterranean kitchen, a weekly paper to pore over for seven nights handrunning, and conversation as meditative and vacant as the chewing of a heifer's cud. From a wood engraving on the wall a slender, angelic girl looked down upon them, and underneath was the legend: "Our Future Queen." And from a highly colored lithograph alongside looked down a stout and elderly lady, with underneath: "Our Queen—Diamond Jubilee."
"What you earn is sweetest," quoth Mrs. Mugridge, when I suggested that it was about time they took a rest.
"No, an' we don't want help," said Thomas Mugridge, in reply to my question as to whether the children lent them a hand.
"We'll work till we dry up and blow away, mother an' me," he added; and Mrs. Mugridge nodded her head in vigorous indorsement.
Fifteen children she had borne, and all were away and gone, or dead. The 'baby,' however, lived in Maidstone, and she was twenty-seven. When the children married they had their hands full with
