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Updated: June 1, 2025
"Penny," said Mrs Hawthorne, "have you looked in the charity-box lately?" "Why, no, mother," answered she, "because I know there's only twopence three farthings in it." "Go and look," said her mother. And what do you think Penny found? The bright farthing was gone, and in its place there was a shining little half-sovereign. How did it come there? That I will leave you to guess.
A galloping hansom, with the prospect of a half-sovereign fare, seemed to him to crawl to Charing Cross like a snail across a window-pane. He caught the train had he missed it he would have ordered out a special and even the express rushing seawards with mails and a full load of Continental passengers seemed like a stage-coach.
Here he stopped for a minute or two to parley with the driver of a four-wheeled cab, whom he finally commissioned to convey us to a shop in New Oxford Street. Having dismissed the cabman with his blessing and a half-sovereign, he vanished into the shop, leaving me to gaze at the lathes, drills, and bars of metal displayed in the window.
Jones, and the auld bodie, Mrs. Gray, and she'll find out anent it! Will ye do this for me?" "Yes, I will, my dear child." "Here is a half-sovereign then to pay for the cab hire. And, oh! be sure ye tak' unco gude care o' my papers! They's a' my fortun', ye ken."
It is a good thing to harness two horses to a cart; but it is not a good thing to try and turn two hansom cabs into one four-wheeler. Turning ten nations into one empire may happen to be as feasible as turning ten shillings into one half-sovereign. Also it may happen to be as preposterous as turning ten terriers into one mastiff.
He thanked me warmly, and said that he should like to know me better. Might he call at my house on the following Saturday afternoon? As luck would have it, I happened to have a card on me, and presented it to him, saying that it would indeed be an honour. "Thanks," he replied, "and then I can repay you this half-sovereign, or whatever it is."
Enchanted by sight of a half-sovereign in the palm of his fare, the cabby executed this manoeuvre to admiration; with the upshot that Lanyard got home half an hour later than he would have had he proceeded to his rooms direct, but with information of value to recompense him. It wasn't his habit to lose time in those days of his youth.
And Collins, stooping to pick up the half-sovereign that had been thrown him, felt that after all it was a poor price to receive for all the jeers and gibes of the assembled onlookers. "Smart capture, Bobby, wasn't it?" sang out a deriding voice that set the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all the evenin' papers oh, yus!
"But, grandmother," said Fanny, "when I saw that pretty half- sovereign dropping down to his purse, I could not help wishing he would give it to me." "And what commandment did you break then, my child?" "Not the eighth if I had kept the half-sovereign I should have broken it," said Fanny, "for that says, thou shalt not steal what commandment did I break, grandmother; for I did not steal?"
In the carriage your father telled me as a joke that he had got away without paying the supper, and that about all the money he had now, forby what was to pay our tickets to London, was the half-sovereign on his watch-chain.
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