hop and the parlor.

"Why, you see, Mr. Berriman," she replied, "our business is a
thriving one, and we don't love to neglect it, for one must
work hard for an honest livelihood; and then you see, my two
girls, Letitia and Lucy, were about to leave their
boarding-school; so Mr. Crowder and I wished to make the old
place as genteel and fashionable as we could; and what with
new stone copings to the windows, and new French
window-frames to the first floor, and a little paint, and a
little papering, Mr. Berriman, we begin to look tolerable. I
must say too, Mr. Crowder has laid out a deal of money in
fitting up the shop, and in filling his cellars."

"Well, ma'am," continued Mr. Berriman, "I don't know where
you find the needful for all these improvements. For my part,
I can only say, our trade seems quite at a stand-still.
There's my wife always begging for money to pay for this or
that little necessary article, but I part from every penny
with a pang. Dear Mrs. Crowder, how do you manage?"

Mrs. Crowder simpered, and raising her eyes, and looking
with a glance of smiling contempt towards the crowd of
customers in the shop, "The fools' pence--'tis THE FOOLS'
PENCE that does it for us," she said.

Perhaps it was owing to the door being just then opened and
left ajar by Miss Lucy, who had been serving in the bar, that
the words of Mrs. Crowder were heard by a man named George
Manly, who stood at the upper end of the counter. He turned
his eyes upon the customers who were standing near him, and
saw pale, sunken cheeks, inflamed eyes, and ragged garments.
He turned them upon the stately apartment in which they were
assembled; he saw that it had been fitted up at no trifling
cost; he stared through the partly open doorway into the
parlor, and saw looking-glasses, and pictures, and gilding,
and fine furniture, and a rich carpet, and Miss Lucy, in a
silk gown, sitting down to her piano-forte: and he thought
within himself, how strange it is, by what a curious process
it is, that all this wretchedness on my left hand is made to
turn into all this rich finery on my right!

"Well, sir, and what's for you?"

These words were spoken in the same shrill voice which had
made the "fools' pence" ring in his ears.

George Manly was still in deep thought, and with the end of