'If you would let me have four pounds upon them, began Mary, hesitatingly. But he snapped up the words.
'Four pounds! Why, Miss Baxendale, you can't know what you are saying. The fashion of these coral things is over and done with. They are worth next to nothing.'
Mary's heart beat quicker in its sickness of disappointment.
'They are genuine, sir, if you'll please to look. The gold is real gold, and the coral is the best coral; my poor mother has told me so many a time. Her godmother was a lady, well-to-do in the world, and the things were a present from her.'
'If they were not genuine, I'd not lend as many pence upon them,' said the man. 'With a little alteration the brooch might be made tolerably modern; otherwise their value would be no more than old gold. In selling them, I——'
'It will not come to that, Mr. Cox,' interrupted Mary. 'Please God spares me a little while—and, since the hot weather went out, I feel a bit stronger—I shall soon redeem them.'
Mr. Cox looked at her thin face; he listened to her short breath; and he drew his own conclusions. There was a line of pity in his hard face, for he had long respected Mary Baxendale.
'By the way the strike seems to be lasting on, there doesn't seem much promise of a speedy end to it,' quoth he, in answer. 'I never was so over-done with pledges.'
'My work does not depend upon that,' said Mary. 'Let me get up a little strength, and I shall have as much work as I can do. And I am well paid, Mr. Cox: I have a private connection. I am not like the poor seamstresses who make skirts for fourpence a-piece.'