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I picked him up at the Elephant, and noticed him particular because he didn't pay the fare for the whole journey, but took penn'orths." "I am greatly obliged to you. Would you know him again?" "Among a thousand! He had a funny look, and never spoke. Just shoved a penny out whenever I came on top. Twice I had to refuse it." "Was he a foreigner?" "Not to my idea. He looked like a Scotchman.
Behind the counter of a fried-fish shop in High Street, Camden Town, serving slabs of browned hake, and skate, and penn'orths of fried eels and chips to the hungry customers who surge in tempestuously to be fed on their homeward way from the Oxford or the Camden Hall of Varieties, or the theatre at the junction of Gower Street and the Hampstead Road one develops acuteness of observation, one gains experience, there being always the bloke who cuts and runs without paying, or eats and shows reversed trouser-pockets in default of settlement, to deal with.... But one does not develop muscle, the thing above all that W. Keyse most longed to possess.
It is true that Isaac did not supply more than the barest necessaries of scribes, the bread and water, so to speak, of stationery, the very plainest pens and paper and ink. He kept his ink in a single moderate-sized jar, out of which he measured penn'orths and ha'p'orths into the various receptacles brought by customers who came to demand "a sup" or "a drain."
Jack always fired up when any reference of this kind was made. "I don't want you to tell me whether I am," he retorted. "Why, he's a regular cad," cried some one. "I know him well; I saw him selling penn'orths of nuts a week or two ago in the Borough." "You hear that," said Horncastle, turning to Jack. "Was it so?"
I wish you knew what a dull evening I have just been living through taking care of a tiny, very dull little shop. Mother was out looking after a sick child, and I had to mind the shop. Poor women came in for penn'orths of paper. I can tell you there wasn't much freedom about that; it was all horrid."
"Your humble sarvant, Mr Lynch," said the widow, entering the shop and immediately taking up a position of strength in her accustomed place behind the counter. "Were you wanting me, this evening?" and she took up the knife with which she cut penn'orths of tobacco for her customers, and hitting the counter with its wooden handle looked as hard as copper, and as bold as brass.
The barrister went inside. He thought of the "man with black, snaky eyes," who "took penn'orths" all the way from the Elephant to Whitehall. And now he, Brett, took a penn'orth to the Elephant. The 'bus reached that famous centre of humanity, passing thence through Newington Butts to the Kennington Park Road.
"Sell," said the master of the shop, "Why nobody wouldn't believe what can be sold by penn'orths and twopenn'orths if you go the right way to work. Look at whelks, for instance. Last Saturday night me and my little Emma here, we sold 7 pounds worth of whelks between eight and half past eleven o'clock and almost all in penn'orths and twopenn'orths a few, hap'orths, but not many.
With the exception of the two ladies, there had been no customer in the shop up to the present. The fact was, they did not begin to appear until soon after eight on Wednesday evenings. Then the schoolgirls and schoolboys and many other people of the poorer class used to drop in for penn'orths and ha'p'orths of stationery, for pens, for ink, for sealing-wax, &c. "Mother must be in soon.
Now, if I was rich like Kathleen, wouldn't I have a gay time of it? Poor dear mother should drive in a carriage, and I'd ride on my pony by her side; and Tom should be a public school boy. There'd be no horrid shop then, and no horrid women coming in for ha'p'orths and penn'orths of paper." But as she ran through the autumn night-air she felt that, after all, there was something good in life.
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