Chapter Eighteen.
How I was knocked down by an auctioneer, and picked up by a countryman.
One day, about two years after my arrival at the pawnbroker’s shop, an unusual circumstance happened to break the monotony of my unruffled existence. This was nothing more nor less than a Clearance Sale. I must tell you how it happened.
For a week, every night, I saw my master poring over a big account-book in his parlour, comparing the entries in it with those of his pawn-tickets, and marking off on one list what articles had been pawned and redeemed, and on another what had been pawned and still remained unredeemed. So lengthy and complicated a process was this that it consumed the entire week. The next week further indications of a coming change manifested themselves. A printer came to the office with a bill for approval, worded as follows:—
“Great Clearance Sale! The entire valuable and miscellaneous unredeemed stock of a pawnbroker will be sold by auction at the Central Mart, on Monday next, by Mr Hammer. Sale to commence at twelve o’clock precisely. Catalogues will be ready on Saturday, and may be had on application.”
Thus I, and one or two of my neighbours on the shelf, read as we peeped through the crack at the printer’s proof-sheet.
“‘Entire valuable and miscellaneous unredeemed stock!’ that’s a good bit of writing,” observed a pair of silver sugar-tongs near me; “that means you and me and the rest, Ticker. Who’d have thought of us getting such a grand name!”
“Well, it strikes me we, at least I, have been lying here idle long enough,” said I; “it’s two years since I came here.”
“Bless you, that’s no time,” said the tongs. “I knew a salt-spoon lay once ten years before he was put up—but then, you know, we silver things are worth our money any time.”