In confusion he nodded assent,
and jerked his finger toward his cap.
"Got a mother?" she pursued. Again he nodded,
with augmented confidence.
"And do you think yourself better than she is?"
The urchin's dirty and unpleasant face screwed itself up
in anxious perplexity over this strange query. Then it
cleared as he thought he grasped the idea, and the rat-eyes he
lifted to her gleamed with the fell acuteness of the Dials.
"I sh'd be sorry if I wasn't," he answered, in swift,
rasping accents. "She's a rare old boozer, she is! It's
a fair curse to an honest boy like me, to 'ave--" "Go home!"
she bade him, peremptorily--and frowned after him as he
ducked and scuttled from the shop.
Left to herself, Mrs. Dabney did not reopen the cash-
book--the wretched day, indeed, had been practically a blank
in its history--but loitered about in the waning light among
the shelves near the desk, altering the position of books
here and there, and glancing cursorily through others.
Once or twice she went to the door and looked out upon
the rain-soaked street. A tradesman's assistant, opposite,
was rolling the iron shutters down for the night.
If business in hats was over for the day, how much
more so in books! Her shop had never been fitted
with shutters--for what reason she could not guess.
The opened pages of numerous volumes were displayed close
against the window, but no one had ever broken a pane
to get at them.
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