men were standing, pipe in mouth, idly talking; these were men who had
already got rid of their week's earnings, or of that portion they had
reserved for their own pleasures, but were not yet prepared to go home,
and so miss the chance of a last half-pint of beer from some passing
still solvent acquaintance. There were other larger groups and little
crowds gathered round the street auctioneers, minstrels, quacks, and
jugglers, whose presence in the busier thoroughfare was not tolerated by
the police.

It was late now, and the money spending and getting nearly over;
costermongers, some with half their goods still unsold, were leaving; the
groups were visibly thinning, the doors of the public-houses swinging to
and fro less frequently. As Fan hurried anxiously along, she peeped
carefully through the clouded window-panes into the "public bar"
department of each drinking place in search of her mother, and paused for
a few moments whenever she came to a group of spectators gathered round
some object of curiosity at a street corner. After satisfying herself
that her mother was not in the crowd, she would remain for a few moments
looking on with the others.

At one spot her attention was painfully held by a short, dark, misshapen
man with no hands nor arms, but only the stump of an arm, with a stick
tied to it. Before him on a rough stand was a board, with half a dozen
thick metal wires stretched across it. Rapidly moving his one poor stump,
he struck on the wires with his stick and so produced a succession of
sounds that roughly resembled a tune. Poor man, how she pitied him; how
much more miserable seemed his life than hers! It was cold and damp, yet
the perspiration stood in great drops on his sallow, wasted face as he
violently wriggled his deformed body about, playing without hands on his
rude instrument--all to make a few pence to save himself from starvation,