Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/78

66 it, so pure and clear-cut, with crystal eyes and red rarified lips and large regular white teeth. I followed her slowly, thinking of her dear face: I felt sure she would love me if she knew me.

She stopped to listen to a man addressing a few gaunt, shivering children whose faces formed a line along the far side of his stall. I went up close to her and looked at her. She was eating nuts, and every now and then let the shell-bits fall out of her mouth down her black coat to the ground. At last she turned her eyes to mine: then exclaimed in an undertone:

'Oh my! I hope you'll know me next time you see me, young man.'

I turned away and crossed the road. I faced a pawnbroker's. An idea came to me. I went in—into a dusky clothes-hung place where a man was sprawling over the counter, under a large gas-jet, with a cigar in his mouth. I said:

'I want to sell this greatcoat. What will you give me for it?'

'Let's see it, sir,' he said.

I took it off.

In the end he gave me fifteen shillings for it. It was quite new.

I went out and counted my money before the next, a jeweller's shop window which was brightly lit up. I had one shilling and sevenpence halfpenny in my pocket. That left me fourteen shillings and ninepence for myself; for I owed Colonel James threepence for my omnibus fare. This and the rest he should have at once. Some day (I hoped soon) he should have to the last farthing I owed him. I turned away, putting his money into one trouser-pocket and my own into the other, and went on for a little. Then feeling the rain and the air colder, and under some unnoticed impulse turning up my coat-collar, I re-crossed the road and wandered on. I did not remark particularly where I went, only that I turned down the narrowest streets I happened to see.

All at once my eye was caught by a card in a small window I was passing. I stopped to look at it. The window, or rather, a linen-blind, was lit-up from within,