"The rest now depends upon myself!" ejaculated Greenwood. "Fortune has not altogether deserted me."
CHAPTER CLXXXVI.
THE NEW CUT.
At nine o'clock on the same evening, Mr. Greenwood, muffled in a cloak, alighted from a hackney-cab in the Waterloo Road at the corner of the New Cut.
That wide thoroughfare which connects the Waterloo and Blackfriars' Roads, is one of the most busy and bustling, after its own fashion, in all London.
Nowhere are the shops of a more miscellaneous nature: nowhere are the pathways so thronged with the stalls and baskets of itinerant venders.
The ingenuity of those petty provision-dealers adapts the spoilt articles of the regular fishmongers and butchers to serviceable purposes in the free market of the New Cut. The fish is cut in slices and fried in an oil or butter whose rancid taste obviates the putrid flavour and smell of the comestible; and the refuse scraps from the butchers shops are chopped up to form a species of sausage-balls called "faggots." Then the grease, in which the racy slices of fish and savoury compounds of lights and liver have been alike cooked, serves to fry large rounds of bread, which, when thus prepared, are denominated "sop in the pan." Of course these culinary refinements are prepared by the venders in their own cellars or garrets hard by; but when conveyed to the miscellaneous market in the New Cut, the luxuries impart a greasy and sickening odour to the air.
It is perfectly wonderful to behold the various methods in which the poor creatures in that thoroughfare endeavour to obtain an honest livelihood; and although their proceedings elicit a smile—still, God pity them! they had better ply their strange trades thus than rob or beg!
There may be seen, for instance, a ragged urchin holding a bundle of onions in his hand, and shouting at the top of his shrill voice, "Here's a ha'porth!"—and, no matter how finely dressed the passer-by, he is sure to thrust the onions under his or her very nose, still vociferating, "Here's a ha'porth!" Poor boy! he thinks every one must want onions!
The immediate vicinity of the Victoria Theatre is infested with women who offer play-bills for sale, and who seem to fancy it impossible that the passers-by can be going elsewhere than to the play.
Here an orange-girl accosts a gentleman with two or three of the fruit in her hand, but with a significant look which gives the assurance that her real trade is of a less innocent nature:—there a poor woman with an array of children before her, offers lucifer matches, but silently appeals for alms.