two-and-sevenpence

Updated: May 14, 2025

So they chose a humble shop, and the girls bought cotton gloves, the kind at sixpence three-farthings, but when they offered a guinea the woman looked at it through her spectacles and said she had no change; so the gloves had to be paid for out of Cyril's two-and-sevenpence that he meant to buy rabbits with, and so had the green imitation crocodile-skin purse at ninepence-halfpenny which had been bought at the same time.

E. (Edith) Nesbit - Five Children and It

'I had to pay for it out of my own two-and-sevenpence, though, that I was going to buy rabbits with, he said. 'They wouldn't change the gold. And when I pulled out a handful the man just laughed and said it was card-counters. And I got some sponge-cakes too, out of a glass jar on the bar-counter. And some biscuits with caraways in.

E. (Edith) Nesbit - Five Children and It