She found the one, in small quantities, and
out of it she managed to buy the other, now and then, over the
counter. But she had long given up looking for the fairies.
The lights along the Embankment had ceased to remind her of those in
the Small People's Gardens; nor did the noise bursting from
music-hall doors as she passed, recall the old sounds; and as for the
scents, there were plenty in London, but none resembling that of the
garden which you might smell a mile out at sea.
I told you that her needlework had been a marvel when she lived down
at the village. Curiously enough, this was the one gift of the
fairies that stayed by her, and it remained as wonderful as ever.
Her most frequent employer was a flat-footed Jew with a large, fleshy
face; and because she had a name for honesty, she was not seldom
entrusted with costly pieces of stuff, and allowed to carry them home
to turn into ball-dresses under the roof through the gaps of which,
as she stitched, she could see the night pass from purple to black,
and from black to the lilac of daybreak. There, with a hundred
pounds' worth of silk and lace on her knee, she would sit and work a
dozen hours to earn as many pence. With fingers weary and--But you
know Hood's song, and no doubt have taken it to heart a dozen times.
It came to this, however, that one evening, when she had not eaten
for forty hours, her employer gave her a piece of embroidery to work
against time.
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