Ross glanced at the tickets, and dropped them to the table in bitter distress. They had been forfeited a whole year.
“I did not suppose they would amount to much now,” said Mrs. Laurence, picking up the papers. “Sold long ago, I dare say.”
Ross took the tickets from her hand again, and read the address with a forlorn hope that the articles, so important to his search, might be found unsold. He left the house at once, and proceeded to the pawnbroker’s, scarcely heeding or caring that the whole world saw him enter a place that is the last foothold of poverty before it drops into abject want.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE PAWNBROKER’S OFFICE.
A dull, dreary place was this pawn-office; its narrow counter all grim with use; its walls studded from floor to ceiling with miserable looking bundles; its boxes partitioned off like cells in a prison, where the sensitive and inexperienced sheltered themselves while taking their last degrading steps on a downward career. All these things struck Ross with a chill, for there is something fearfully pathetic in poverty when it takes a form like that.
With a sense of strange humiliation, this refined gentleman glided into one of those secret boxes, into which want shrinks from the human gaze with a keener sense of shame than guilt often knows. His breath came short, and he asked, hoarsely, if there was yet a possibility of redeeming the articles which the two crumpled tickets represented.
The pawnbroker, a heavy, dark man, whose hands were as unclean as his practices, took the tickets, saw the date, and handed it back with a gruff shake of the head.
“Forfeited long ago. You ought to have seen that, if you know how to read.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Ross, too anxious for resentment. “Of course, I was aware of the date; but is it possible to obtain these articles?”
“Obtain them? No; they are sold.”