“She said nothing, merely passed the books over towards me, and as I took four half-crowns out of my till and placed them on the counter, I saw the little fingers, all sore and worn with needlework, trembled as they picked the money up, and a half-suppressed sigh the poor girl gave seemed to go right to my heart.
“The next moment she had glided from the shop, leaving me fighting with feelings that were rather strange to me, till I was obliged to give in, and confess that I was wanting in sympathy and humanity towards one sore in distress.
“‘You ought to have given what she asked,’ whispered Conscience, ‘and you would not have felt the loss.’
“‘But business—trade—current prices,’ I muttered in defence.
“‘Go and take her the other ten shillings,’ said Conscience; and, without another word of defence, I took the money from the till, locked it, and hurried out of the shop, leaving no one to mind it, for my wife was out, and ran down the street, looked up this turning, along that, in every direction I could think of; but in vain; the poor girl was gone.
“I felt more disappointed than I could have thought possible as I turned back; but I consoled myself with the thought that she would come again; for when people of a decent class once began to sell me books, they came again and again, many times over; and I have remarked that they mostly began with a few shabby old worthless volumes, and gradually got on to those which were more valuable, though this was not the case here.
“I hurried back to the shop, when, as a matter of course, there was some one there; for though you may often wait all day for a customer, most likely if you get out of the way for five minutes, somebody comes. In this case it was an old clergyman, who had taken up one of the four quarto volumes, and just giving me a nod, he stood there reading for, I should think, quite a quarter of an hour, and then asked the price of the books.
“‘Two pounds,’ I said, for I seemed to fancy that he would try to beat me down to half. But no; he pulled out his old net purse, shook out a couple of sovereigns, put two volumes under one arm and two under the other, and marched out of the shop.
“‘This is a curious sort of day,’ I thought to myself; and somehow or other I felt so put out, that when my boy came back from an errand, after being not more than twice as long gone as he should have been, I boxed his ears—both of them—with the first and second volumes of an abridged Froissart, and then threw a pocket Nugent at him for snuffling and muttering in the corner.
“For I was really put out and hurt and annoyed; and I know I once called myself a wretched old miser.