it. She had no
previous experience of selling things, so, choosing out the best
jeweller's shop in the High Street, she marched blithely in, and taking
off her watch and chain laid them upon the counter.

"Yes, Miss; want repairing, I suppose?" enquired the assistant who came
to attend to her.

"No, they're in perfectly good order; but I wish to sell them. What
price can you give me for them?" returned Gipsy confidently.

The man looked at her in decided astonishment, then pushed back the
watch across the counter with a marked decrease of civility.

"We don't do that kind of business," he replied shortly.

"Won't you buy it then?" asked Gipsy in accents of blank disappointment.

"No; it's not in our line at all."

"Then where should I be able to sell it?"

"I couldn't say; probably at a secondhand shop. We only deal in new
articles."

Very much disconcerted and snubbed, Gipsy snatched up her watch and
chain and fled from the shop. She had evidently made a mistake in
applying at a first-class jeweller's, and she was angry at having
exposed herself to the humiliation of a rebuff. With two flaming spots
in her cheeks, she stalked down the High Street, and into one of the
narrower and more modest by-streets, where smaller shops were to be
found. She walked on for quite a long way without meeting with any place
that looked in the least degree likely; then at last, at the corner of
an even humbler street still, she found a secondhand furniture dealer,
who, to judge by the contents of his windows, seemed also to trade in a
variety of miscellaneous articles. On the pavement in front of the shop
were spread forth specimens of chairs, tables, and washstands, and
inside she could see a goodly array of glass, antique china, old
jewellery, old silver, prints, pictures, books, candlesticks, firearms,
and an assortment of small pieces of bric-a-brac. Over the door was the
name of Daniel Lucas.

"This looks more the kind of place," she murmured. "I'll have a try
here, at any rate."

The interior of the shop was so crowded with furniture that it was quite
difficult to walk between the piled-up sideboards and sofas to the
corner where a very dirty and shabby-looking individual, with untidy
grey hair and unshaven chin, was busy adding up accounts. He paused with
a grimy finger in the middle of a column of figures, and peered at Gipsy
with a pair of red, bleary eyes.

[Illustration: "HE PAUSED AND PEERED AT GIPSY"]

"I see