I said that it was not.
"Sorry to have troubled you. Throgmorton Street, driver. Push along."
I was closing the door when I was hailed by a woman, who remained standing at the foot of the steps. She was a young woman, evidently of the artisan class. She wore an air of depression, and carried a baby in her arms.
"Was the purse which was found mine, sir?"
"What was yours like?"
"I lost it in the Mile End Road on Saturday night, sir. My husband's wages was in it--twenty-four and sixpence. He see the advertisement in the paper, and sent me round to see. Leather it was--leastways, imitation--red, and the clasp was broken."
"I am sorry to say that your description bears no kind of resemblance to the one which is in my possession."
She looked at me for a moment, scrutinizingly, as if desirous of learning if what I said was credible; then, without another word, moved off.
I had succeeded in closing the door just as there came another rap upon the knocker. I reopened it, to find myself confronted by another of the unemployed.
"I ask your pardon, guv'nor, but seeing an advertisement about a purse as was found, I thought I'd just come round to see if it might happen to be mine. Mine wasn't a leather purse, nor yet it wasn't a shammy leather, nor yet it wasn't one of them sealskin kind of things."