Dalton hesitated, turning the matter over in his mind.  The transfer would bring him the desired pawn-ticket, but the five dollars was not sufficient to help him tide over the most pressing of his difficulties.  He had borrowed double that sum two nights before, from the barkeeper of a pool-room where he occasionally played, and he dared not repeat his visit until he could carry him the money.

The male Blobbs, the taller and more rotund of the two shopkeepers—­especially about the middle—­ now strolled in, leaned over the counter, and picking up the lace, held it to the overhead light.  Looked at from behind, Blobbs was all shirt-sleeves and waist-coat, the back of his flat head resting like a lid on his shoulders.  Looked at from the front, Blobbs developed into a person with shoe-brush whiskers bristling against two yellow cheeks, the features being the five dots a child always insists upon when drawing a face.  Dalton saw at a glance that it was Mrs. Blobbs, and not Mr. Blobbs, who was in charge of the shop, and that any discussions with him as to the price would be useless.

“You’re an Hinglishnan, I take it,” came from the lowest dot of the five, a blurred and uncertain mouth.

Dalton colored slightly and nodded.

“Well, what I should adwise ye to do is to take this ’ere lace to some of them hold furnitoor shops.  I know what this is.  I ’ate to see a chap like ye put to it like this, that’s why I tell ye.  ’Ard on your woman, but—­there’s a shop hup on Fourth Avenue where they buy such things.  A Dutchman by the name of Kling, right on the corner—­you can’t miss it.  Take it hup to ’im and tell ’im I sent ye—­we often ’elps one another.”

Dalton crumpled up the black wad, slid the package under his coat, and without a word of thanks left the shop.

This was not the first time Blobbs had sent Kling a customer.  Indeed, there had always been more or less of a trade between the two establishments.  For, while Mrs. Blobbs had a license and could advance money at reasonable rates, her principal business was in old-clothes and ready-to-wear finery.  Being near “The Avenue” and well known to its denizens, many of their outgrown and out-of-fashion garments had passed across her counter.  Here the young man who pounded away on Masie’s piano, the night of her birthday party, borrowed, for a trifle, his evening suit.  Here Codman had exchanged a three-year-old overcoat, which refused to be buttoned across his constantly increasing girth, for enough money to pay for the velvet cuffs and collar of the new one purchased on Sixth Avenue.  Here Mrs. Codman bought remnants of finery with which to adorn her young daughter’s skirts when she went to the ball given by the Washington chowder party.  Here, too, was where the undertaker sold the clothes of the man who stepped off a ten-story building in the morning and was laid out that same night in Digwell’s back room, his friends depositing a fresh suit for him to be buried in, telling the undertaker to do with the old one as he pleased.  And to this old-clothes shop flocked many another denizen of side streets, who at one time or another had reached crises in their careers which nothing else could relieve.