"Couldn't do it," said the pawnbroker.
I stood speechless for a moment, not knowing what to say next, and then the pawnbroker, with apparent indifference, said:
"I'll give you two ten for it out and out."
"You mean I am to sell . . ."
"Yus, take it or leave it, my dear."
It is no use saying what I suffered at that moment. I think I became ten years older during the few minutes I stood at that counter.
But they came to an end somehow, and the next thing I knew was that I was on my way back to Ilford; that the damp air had deepened into rain; that miserable and perhaps homeless beings, ill-clad and ill-fed, were creeping along in the searching cold with that shuffling sound which bad boots make on a wet pavement; and that I was telling myself with a fluttering heart that the sheltering wings of my beautiful mother in heaven had come to cover my child.
On reaching the Olivers', hot and breathless, I put three gold coins, two sovereigns and a half-sovereign, on to the table to pay off the broker's men.
They had been settling themselves for the night, and looked surprised and I thought chagrined, but took up the money and went away.
As they were going off one of them called me to the door, and in the little space at the foot of the stairs he said, tipping his fingers towards the cot: