These expressions being evoked by the swift, supple movement of arm and wrist that had sent the half-crown flying into the midst of the Pall Mall traffic. A sharp ring on the wood-pavement, a yell, and a flourish of naked heels, and a street Arab had seized the treasure. As the fog swallowed the wealthy imp, said Buttons icily:
"That's your game, is it?—pavin' Pall Mall with 'arf bulls for gutter-pads to pick up. Better ha' tipped it to me!—or sent it back to Old Fireworks. He ain't got too many of 'em. Signs too many toast-and-water tickets to be flush!"
Perhaps P. C. Breagh, scalding with wrath as he was, would have dived in among the traffic to recover the coin had it been recoverable. But the snows of yester-year were not more irretrievably gone. He realized it, hung his head and hunched his shoulders, and moved away from the region of clubs, where officers of the twin Services talked shop in sublime indifference to other subjects, as white-chokered attendants supplied them with savory meats and cheering drinks.
Be sorry for the boy with the gaunt wolf Hunger at his heels, and the black demon of Despair sitting on his shoulders. That determination of his to face what might come, and take his luck in a cheerful spirit, was to be put to a yet fiercer test before the dawn of a new day.
He was hungry and thirsty, and sorely tempted to break into his solitary shilling. But that silver barrier between himself and pennilessness was not to be lightly changed. He wondered, as he recalled to mind the many occasions upon which he had wantonly squandered and wasted money, whether an experience such as this, previously undergone, would not have been a valuable lesson in thrift?
He presently came by a well-known theater. It was too early for the frequenters of the Stalls and Boxes and Grand Circle. But playgoers of the humbler kind were pouring in to fill the unnumbered seats in the upper tiers, and a crowd composed of the usual elements had gathered at the doors of the Pit and Gallery, and filled the narrow side-alley in which these were situated, and overflowed into the Strand.
Queues not being officially recognized and regulated, there was a good deal of obstruction and pushing and persiflage. Pausing a moment under the gas-jet bordered, glazed shelter ornamenting the box-office entrance, his unseasoned eyes winced as they took in a sad, sad sight.
You saw her as a woman not past early middle-age, nobly proportioned, and even in her dreadful degradation, imperially beautiful. An old velvet mantle covered her, from which the torn and moth-eaten fur-trimming hung in draggled festoons. A trained silk gown, stained and torn and flounced with mud of many thicknesses, trailed upon the slushy Strand pavement; a broken bonnet perched on a palpably false and inconceivably dirty chignon, the false curls that cascaded from beneath it, hid a workhouse-crop of rusty gray.... And she lifted her skirts aside, disclosing muddy bare feet shod with a trodden-down, elastic-sided boot and a ragged slipper; and stepped across the threshold of the gilt and mirrored vestibule with a graceful, royal air....
"Now then, missus! Out of this, will you!"
A uniformed theater-attendant had advanced toward the intruder. But she did not retreat in terror at his truculence. She drew herself up, and folded her arms upon her bosom, and confronted the menial with a haughty, quelling stare.