It was always a neck and neck race between the two bins on either side of Dorothy and Nobby, bin number 6 and bin number 8. Bin number 6 was a family of gypsies, a curly-headed, ear-ringed father, an old dried-up leather-coloured mother, and two strapping sons, and bin number 8 was an old East End coster-woman who wore a broad hat and long black cloak and took snuff out of a papier-mache box with a steamer painted on the lid. She was always helped by relays of daughters and granddaughters who came down from London for two days at a time. There was quite a troop of children working with the set, following the bins with baskets and gathering up the fallen hops while the adults picked. And the old coster-woman’s tiny, pale granddaughter Rose, and a little gypsy girl, dark as an Indian, were p
