MODUS OPERANDI OF SELLING.
"You wan'sh a nish pair o' bootsh? S'help, I shells you thish pair for two shillings, and they wash never made lesh than a guinea and a half! Don't you want to buy these sphlendid bootsh; s'help me, I only makes'h two pensh?"
I tried to get away, but he held to my arm and kept shaking the boots, while his sharp, black eyes glittered like sword points at the prospect of losing a sale. At last the detective, losing patience, jerked him away, and we passed on to the next slop stand.
This was kept by an old Irish woman. The Jew was all mercantile acerbity and sharpness. This old humbug of a female Celt was all treacle and honey.
"Ah, then, it's the foine gentleman that ye are. It's easy to see the good dhrop is in ye. May be it's a likin' ye'd be taking to this sphlindid waistcoat; that's all the fashion now, and it's well it 'id look on yer fine figger. And don't ye want nothing at all to wear? And shure ye wouldn't be afther goin' naked like an omaudhaun in the streets and havin' the people shoutin' after ye?"
"How much rent d'ye pay for this stall," said I to her, to get her off a topic by which she made her living.
"Is't the durty rint ye mane? Well, it's enouff for the ould hole. I pay sixpence a day in advance, and the devil resave the penny I've turned yet, this blessed mornin."
"Have you any one to support beside yourself?"
"Well, indade, I have two childher, and its small comfort they are to me. One of thim, the eldest, is down wud scarlet favir, and the docthor says it tin to one if she'll ever recover."
"You see sir," said the detective, "the people who rent stands from the men as own this place, they have to pay sixpence a day to 'old the stand. But those fellows as you see running around like lunatics, and a borin of every one, they pays two pence a day rents—cos why they 'ave no stands and honly walk habout with the clothes hon their harms."