We left Mr. Sandboys engaged in the interesting occupation of hunting after his lost inexpressibles—the very inexpressibles which his wife had mended previous to his departure from Buttermere, and which that lady had since exchanged, together with forty pounds in bank notes and her own marriage certificate in the pockets, for a pot of mignionette and a couple of cut roses.
His son Jobby, too, was employed upon the same agreeable mission; but the researches of the youth were neither vigorous nor profitable, for remembering the unpleasant issue of his previous wanderings in the metropolis, he feared to travel far from the domestic precincts of Craven Street, lest his rambles might end in his being flayed; stripped of his cloth cuticle—his sartorial integuments, once more; the timid boy therefore kept pacing to and fro within view of his own knocker, or if he allowed the domestic door-step to fade from his sight, he did so only when at the heels of the proximate Policeman.
Mr. Cursty, however, was far more venturesome. He thought of his lost bank notes and missing marriage certificate, and what with the matter o’ money and the matrimony, he rushed on, determined not to leave a paving nor a flag-stone untrodden throughout the streets of London, till he regained possession of his lost treasures. So away he went, as the north country people say, “tappy lappy,” with his coat laps flying “helter-skelter,” as if he were “heighty-flighty.”
Up and down, in and out of all the neighbouring streets he hurried, stopping only to ask of the passers-by whether they had met a hawker of flowers on their way. Not a public-house in the neighbourhood but he entered to search and inquire after the missing flower-seller; and when he had explored every adjacent thoroughfare, and bar, and taproom, and, after all, grown none the wiser, and got none the nearer to the whereabouts of the floral “distributor,” he proceeded to unbosom himself respecting the nature and extent of his losses to the police on duty, and to consult with them as to the best means of recovering his notes and “marriage lines.”
All the “authorities” whom he spoke to on the subject, agreed that the only chance he had of ever again setting eyes on his property, was of proceeding direct to the Old Clothes Exchange in Houndsditch, whither the purchasers of the united “left off wearing apparel” of the metropolis and its suburbs daily resort, to get “the best price given for their old rags.”
Accordingly, Mr. Cursty Sandboys, having minutely copied down, in order to prevent mistakes—for his care increased with each fresh disaster—the name and description of the locality which he was advised to explore, called a cab, and directed the driver to convey him, with all possible speed, to the quarter in which the left-off apparel market was situated.
He was not long in reaching the desired spot. The cabman drew up at the end of the narrow passage leading to the most fashionable of the Old Clothes Marts, and Mr. Sandboys having paid the driver well for the haste he had made, proceeded at once to plunge into the vortex of the musty market.
Outside the gateway stood the celebrated “Barney Aaron,” the hook-nosed janitor, with his hook-nosed son by his side—the father ready to receive the halfpenny toll from each of the buyers and sellers as he entered the Exchange, and the youth with a leathern pouch filled with “coppers,” to give as change for any silver that might be tendered.
As Cursty passed through the gate, the stench of the congregated old clothes and rags and hareskins was almost overpowering. The place stank like a close damp cellar. There was that peculiar sour smell in the atmosphere which appertains to stale infants, blended with the mildewy odour of what is termed “mother”—a mixture of mouldiness, mustiness, and fustiness, that was far from pleasant in the nostrils.
Scarcely had Cursty entered the Mart before he was surrounded by some half-dozen eager Jews, some with long grizzly beards, and others in greasy gaberdines—each seizing him by the arm, or pulling him by his coat, or tapping him on the shoulder, as they one and all clamoured for a sight of whatever he might have to sell.