lling the
hesitating visitor, who, if he be as yet uninitiated, examines one of the
old garnet brooches in the window for a minute or two with affected
eagerness, as if he contemplated making a purchase; and then looking
cautiously round to ascertain that no one watches him, hastily slinks in:
the door closing of itself after him, to just its former width. The shop
front and the window-frames bear evident marks of having been once
painted; but, what the colour was originally, or at what date it was
probably laid on, are at this remote period questions which may be asked,
but cannot be answered. Tradition states that the transparency in the
front door, which displays at night three red balls on a blue ground,
once bore also, inscribed in graceful waves, the words 'Money advanced on
plate, jewels, wearing apparel, and every description of property,' but a
few illegible hieroglyphics are all that now remain to attest the fact.
The plate and jewels would seem to have disappeared, together with the
announcement, for the articles of stock, which are displayed in some
profusion in the window, do not include any very valuable luxuries of
either kind. A few old china cups; some modern vases, adorned with
paltry paintings of three Spanish cavaliers playing three Spanish
guitars; or a party of boors carousing: each boor with one leg painfully
elevated in the air, by way of expressing his perfect freedom and gaiety;
several sets of chessmen, two or three flutes, a few fiddles, a
round-eyed portrait staring in astonishment from a very dark ground; some
gaudily-bound prayer-books and testaments, two rows of silver watches
quite as clumsy and almost as large as Ferguson's first; numerous
old-fashioned table and tea spoons, displayed, fan-like, in half-dozens;
strings of coral with great broad gilt snaps; cards of rings and
brooches, fastened and labelled separately, like the insects in the
British Museum; cheap silver penholders and snuff-boxes, with a masonic
star, complete the jewellery department; while five or six beds in smeary
clouded ticks, strings of blankets and sheets, silk and cotton
handkerchiefs, and wearing apparel of every description, form the more
useful, though even less ornamental, part, of the articles exposed for
sale. An extensive collection of planes, chisels, saws, and other
carpenters' tools, which have been pledged, and never redeemed, form the
foreground of the picture; while the large frames full of ticke