ttle, the prices rising
and falling according to the temper of the crowd. And they watched one
another with crafty eyes that had long lost the power to see anything
but the faults and defects in the property of others. Those who had
commissions from buyers marked the chosen lots in their catalogue with
a stumpy pencil.

Mother Jenkins was one of these. She was the auctioneer's scavenger,
snapping up the dishonoured, broken remnants disdained by the others,
buying for a song the job lots on the way to the rubbish-heap. All was
fish that came to her net, for her second-hand shop in Bathurst Street
had taught her to despise nothing that had an ounce of wear left in it.
Her bids never ran beyond a few shillings, but to-day she had an
important commission, twenty pounds to lay out on the furnishing of
three rooms for a married couple. These were her windfalls. Sometimes
she got a wedding order, and furnished the house out of her amazing
collection, supplemented by her bargains at the next auction sale.
This had brought her to the sale early, for the young couple, deciding
to furnish in style, had exhausted her resources by demanding
wardrobes, dressing-tables, and washstands with marble tops.

The young woman with the mop of red hair followed on her heels, amazed
by the luxury of the interior harmonized in a scheme of colour. Her
day-dreams, coloured by the descriptions of ducal mansions in penny
novelettes, came suddenly true. And she lingered before carved
cabinets, strange vases like frozen rainbows, and Oriental tapestry
with the instinctive delight in luxury planted in women.

But Mother Jenkins had no time to spare. She had found the very thing
for Pinkey, and led the way to the servants' quarters, hidden at the
back of the house. Pinkey's visions of grandeur fled at the sight.
The rooms were small, and a sour smell hung on the air, the peculiar
odour of servants' rooms where ventilation is unknown. Pinkey
recognized the curtains and drapes at a glance, the pick of a suburban
rag-shop. One room was as bare as a prison cell, merely a place to
sleep in, but the next was royally furnished with a wardrobe,
toilet-table, and washstand, solid and old-fashioned like the
generation it had outlived. By its look it had descended in regular
stages from the bedrooms of the family to the casual guests' room and
then to the servants. But Pinkey had seen nothing so beautiful at
home, and her heart swelled at the tho