--worse
luck!' Here, as the woman has completely run herself out of breath, the
pawnbroker himself, who has just appeared behind the counter in a gray
dressing-gown, embraces the favourable opportunity of putting in a
word:--'Now I won't have none of this sort of thing on my premises!' he
interposes with an air of authority. 'Mrs. Mackin, keep yourself to
yourself, or you don't get fourpence for a flat iron here; and Jinkins,
you leave your ticket here till you're sober, and send your wife for them
two planes, for I won't have you in my shop at no price; so make yourself
scarce, before I make you scarcer.'

This eloquent address produces anything but the effect desired; the women
rail in concert; the man hits about him in all directions, and is in the
act of establishing an indisputable claim to gratuitous lodgings for the
night, when the entrance of his wife, a wretched, worn-out woman,
apparently in the last stage of consumption, whose face bears evident
marks of recent ill-usage, and whose strength seems hardly equal to the
burden--light enough, God knows!--of the thin, sickly child she carries
in her arms, turns his cowardly rage in a safer direction. 'Come home,
dear,' cries the miserable creature, in an imploring tone; '_do_ come
home, there's a good fellow, and go to bed.'--'Go home yourself,' rejoins
the furious ruffian. 'Do come home quietly,' repeats the wife, bursting
into tears. 'Go home yourself,' retorts the husband again, enforcing his
argument by a blow which sends the poor creature flying out of the shop.
Her 'natural protector' follows her up the court, alternately venting his
rage in accelerating her progress, and in knocking the little scanty blue
bonnet of the unfortunate child over its still more scanty and
faded-looking face.

In the last box, which is situated in the darkest and most obscure corner
of the shop, considerably removed from either of the gas-lights, are a
young delicate girl of about twenty, and an elderly female, evidently her
mother from the resemblance between them, who stand at some distance
back, as if to avoid the observation even of the shopman. It is not
their first visit to a pawnbroker's shop, for they answer without a
moment's hesitation the usual questions, put in a rather respectful
manner, and in a much lower tone than usual, of 'What name shall I
say?--Your own property, of course?--Where do you live?--Housekeeper or
lodger?' They bargain, too, for a higher loa