There was brisk traffic in toffy, and gray peas and monkey-nuts, and the crowd was swollen by anxious parents seeing tiny or truant offspring safe within the school-gates.

The women were bare-headed or be-shawled, with infants at their breasts and little ones toddling at their sides, the men were greasy, and musty, and squalid.

Here a bright earnest little girl held her vagrant big brother by the hand, not to let go till she had seen him in the bosom of his class-mates.

There a sullen wild-eyed mite in petticoats was being dragged along, screaming, towards distasteful durance.

It was a drab picture--the bleak, leaden sky above, the sloppy, miry stones below, the frowsy mothers and fathers, the motley children.
"Monkey-nuts! Monkey-nuts!" croaked a wizened old woman.
"Oppea! Oppea!" droned a doddering old Dutchman.