ted
bundles, which are dimly seen through the dirty casement up-stairs--the
squalid neighbourhood--the adjoining houses, straggling, shrunken, and
rotten, with one or two filthy, unwholesome-looking heads thrust out of
every window, and old red pans and stunted plants exposed on the
tottering parapets, to the manifest hazard of the heads of the
passers-by--the noisy men loitering under the archway at the corner of
the court, or about the gin-shop next door--and their wives patiently
standing on the curb-stone, with large baskets of cheap vegetables slung
round them for sale, are its immediate auxiliaries.

If the outside of the pawnbroker's shop be calculated to attract the
attention, or excite the interest, of the speculative pedestrian, its
interior cannot fail to produce the same effect in an increased degree.
The front door, which we have before noticed, opens into the common shop,
which is the resort of all those customers whose habitual acquaintance
with such scenes renders them indifferent to the observation of their
companions in poverty. The side door opens into a small passage from
which some half-dozen doors (which may be secured on the inside by bolts)
open into a corresponding number of little dens, or closets, which face
the counter. Here, the more timid or respectable portion of the crowd
shroud themselves from the notice of the remainder, and patiently wait
until the gentleman behind the counter, with the curly black hair,
diamond ring, and double silver watch-guard, shall feel disposed to
favour them with his notice--a consummation which depends considerably on
the temper of the aforesaid gentleman for the time being.

At the present moment, this elegantly-attired individual is in the act of
entering the duplicate he has just made out, in a thick book: a process
from which he is diverted occasionally, by a conversation he is carrying
on with another young man similarly employed at a little distance from
him, whose allusions to 'that last bottle of soda-water last night,' and
'how regularly round my hat he felt himself when the young 'ooman gave
'em in charge,' would appear to refer to the consequences of some stolen
joviality of the preceding evening. The customers generally, however,
seem unable to participate in the amusement derivable from this source,
for an old sallow-looking woman, who has been leaning with both arms on
the counter with a small bundle before her, for half an hour previously,
s