in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a doorstep,
quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had already made, and with
hardly breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and half-guinea.

It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, as I sat
resting. But it was a summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. When
I had recovered my breath, and had got rid of a stifling sensation in
my throat, I rose up and went on. In the midst of my distress, I had no
notion of going back. I doubt if I should have had any, though there had
been a Swiss snow-drift in the Kent Road.

But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and I
am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a Saturday
night!) troubled me none the less because I went on. I began to picture
to myself, as a scrap of newspaper intelligence, my being found dead in
a day or two, under some hedge; and I trudged on miserably, though as
fast as I could, until I happened to pass a little shop, where it was
written up that ladies' and gentlemen's wardrobes were bought, and that
the best price was given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The master
of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and
as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from
the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show
what they were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful
disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.

My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that here
might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while. I went up
the next by-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my
arm, and came back to the shop door.

'If you please, sir,' I said, 'I am to sell this for a fair price.'

Mr. Dolloby--Dolloby was the name over the shop door, at least--took the
waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head, against the door-post, went into
the shop, followed by me, snuffed the two candles with his fingers,
spread the waistcoat on the counter, and looked at it there, held it up
against the light, and looked at it there, and ultimately said:

'What do you call a price, now, for this here little weskit?'

'Oh! you know best, sir,' I returned modestly.

'I can't be buyer and seller too,' said Mr. Dolloby. 'Put a price on
this here little weskit.'

'Would eighteenpence be?'--I hinted, after some hesitation.