Pennyloaf hastened on.  She was a meagre, hollow-eyed, bloodless girl of seventeen, yet her features had a certain charm—­that dolorous kind of prettiness which is often enough seen in the London needle-slave.  Her habitual look was one of meaningless surprise; whatever she gazed upon seemed a source of astonishment to her, and when she laughed, which was not very often, her eyes grew wider than ever.  Her attire was miserable, but there were signs that she tried to keep it in order; the boots upon her feet were sewn and patched into shapelessness; her limp straw hat had just received a new binding.

By saying that she had things ‘to put away,’ she meant that her business was with the pawnbroker, who could not receive pledges after eight o’clock.  It wanted some ten minutes of the hour when she entered a side-doorway, and, by an inner door, passed into one of a series of compartments constructed before the pawnbroker’s counter.  She deposited her bundle, and looked about for someone to attend to her.  Two young men were in sight, both transacting business; one was conversing facetiously with a customer on the subject of a pledge.  Two or three gas-jets lighted the interior of the shop, but the boxes were in shadow.  There was a strong musty odour; the gloom, the narrow compartments, the low tones of conversation, suggested stealth and shame.

Pennyloaf waited with many signs of impatience, until one of the assistants approached, a smartly attired youth, with black hair greased into the discipline he deemed becoming, with an aquiline nose, a coarse mouth, a large horseshoe pin adorning his necktie, and rings on his fingers.  He caught hold of the packet and threw it open; it consisted of a petticoat and the skirt of an old dress.

‘Well, what is it?’ he asked, rubbing his tongue along his upper lip before and after speaking.

‘Three an’ six, please, sir.’

He rolled the things up again with a practised turn of the hand, and said indifferently, glancing towards another box, ‘Eighteenpence.’

‘Oh, sir, we had two shillin’s on the skirt not so long ago,’ pleaded Pennyloaf, with a subservient voice.  ’Make it twoshillin’s—­please do, sir!

The young man paid no attention; he was curling his moustache and exchanging a smile of intelligence with his counter-companion with respect to a piece of business the latter had in hand.  Of a sudden he turned and said sharply: 

‘Well, are you goin’ to take it or not?’

Pennyloaf sighed and nodded.

’Got a ‘apenny?’ he asked.

‘No.’

He fetched a cloth, rolled the articles in it very tightly, and pinned them up; then he made out ticket and duplicate, handling his pen with facile flourish, and having blotted the little piece of card on a box of sand (a custom which survives in this conservative profession), he threw it to the customer.  Lastly, he counted out one shilling and fivepenee halfpenny.  The coins were sandy, greasy, and of scratched surface.