Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 69: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER VII EVENING IN LONDON — THE GALLOWS’ WIDOW IT was nine o’clock in the evening, and a misty rain was falling. | | The lamps shone dimly, as if through a fog; the streets were covered with a slimy mud; and Father Thames rolled through the arches of London Bridge with a moaning sound. The wayfarers in the streets hurried along in a manner - which showed that they would not be abroad unless business or necessity compelled them. Those who had umbrellas were a trifle less sullen in looks than those who had none; and these latter appeared as miserable as scanty clothing, inclement weather, and the jostling of crowds on the filthy, slippery pavement could possibly render them. Young seamstresses taking home the work which they had toiled hard to accomplish by a certain time, milliner- girls returning to their poor lodgings, women of pleasure in their flaunting garbs, contrasting so strangely with the aspect of the evening, poor men’s wives going to purchase the frugal supper at some cheap shop, and old crones shuffling along to the public-house, — these were all mingled pell- mell in the myriad thoroughfares of the mighty metropolis, and the eye of the acute observer might single out each and assign her to the particular class to which she belonged. Of the male sex there were the ill-paid and half-starved clerk, the artisan, wearied with his hard day’s labour, the needy adventurer in his shabby-genteel suit, the small tradesman, running about to collect in a few debts for the purpose of meeting a payment on the morrow, the old liber- tine whom no weather could keep out of the streets when the frail sisterhood walked abroad, the young rake puffing his cigar and nodding familiarly to the loose females whom 52 Gomichdooks (E(0)