“Directly after breakfast my gentleman hurried off to the Notting Hill Gate Tube station, and pushed me through a pigeon-hole to the ticket-seller, who laid me on the counter before him with a great many other coins all spread out. Before, however, I could say anything more than just ‘How do you do?’ to them, I was taken up again and given in change to another traveller.
“This traveller had a little boy with him on his way back to school from Liverpool Street, and I very nearly passed into his possession as a tip, but just at the last moment the traveller thought better of it, and instead of giving the little boy a single shilling gave him half a crown (as all fathers and uncles ought to do at the very least), and so I went back into his pocket again.
“After the boy had gone I had a busy two hours in the city. I was first paid away to a ’bus conductor, and was given by him in change to a lady on her way to a special service at St. Paul’s. I was there laid in a collection plate, which usually means a long rest for us; but happily one of the clergymen wanted a pound’s worth of silver, and I had the luck to be among it. He paid me to a cabman who took him to the Royal Academy, and by this cabman I was soon after given as change to a gentleman whom he drove from the Albany to Waterloo. This gentleman dropped me into a pocket full of money and settled down in the corner of a railway carriage to read the paper and smoke a cigar.
“‘Do you know where we are going?’ said one of the other coins to me. ‘We are going to the races. We may have some fun.’
“This pleased me very much, for I had never been to the races in my life, but had heard much about them from time to time.
“‘Sometimes we make a lot of money for our master,’ the coin continued, ‘but sometimes he loses us for ever.’
“‘Yes,’ said a very fat five-shilling piece, who was hurting me horribly by the way he leaned against me, ‘but, of course, you [meaning me] are too small to make any money. It is fellows like me, and sovereigns and half-sovereigns, that make the money.’
“None the less, as it happened, I made some too, although I had a dreadful shock for a moment when my master gave me to a man for a race-card, and I thought I should never have any fun at all. Luckily, however, the race-card man was thirsty, and I found my way into a till, and then I was given as change to a waiter, and soon after realized that I was in the till of the members’ restaurant.
“There, for the first time in my life, I met a bank-note. The delicate, fragile thing! She was very proud, but quite affable. We call them Duchesses. You should hear them rustle as they move! They don’t live with us, of course; they live in leather cases in the more fashionable parts of the clothing, but now and then we find ourselves in the same plate at restaurants, and I tell you it is a great moment for a shilling when that happens. How one’s heart beats! That was what occurred on this very occasion. I went out of the till in company with this beautiful, refined creature, and the gentleman to whom we were carried gave me back to the waiter as a tip.
“No sooner was lunch over than the waiter ran out on the course with me in his hand, and went up to a man who was standing on a box, and asked: ‘What price Flatiron?’ and the man said, ‘Tens.’ Then the waiter handed me to the man, and he dropped me into a bag full of other money, both silver and gold, and gave the waiter a ticket.