Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 287: what you’re looking at

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

270 REYNOLDS’ WORKS Yes, it was a gambling-house for females. None of the other sex was admitted, there, and only those who were well known to the mistress of the den, or who were properly introduced by old-standing friends, could obtain ingress thither. At the head of the table sat a woman who was as much like the one we have already described as any human being can possibly resemble another. Indeed, they were sisters; but it was the elder one, who had admitted Madge Somers, that was the mistress of the place. The other was merely paid by the first-named to conduct the gaming-table. We are thus minute as to particulars, because it is no im- aginary den which we are describing, but one which existed at the period whereot we are writing. The woman who presided at the gaming-table kept a regular ‘ bank” just the same as at the great gambling- houses of the West End, one of which we described in an ~ earlier chapter of this narrative. The “ bank,’ which was contained in a tin box with three distinct compartments, consisted of gold, silver, and copper money, and the woman who acted as croupier had a wooden rake to gather up or push the coin about in the most approved style of the avocation. An imperturbable gravity rested upon her thin, ghastly countenance, and if there were any personal trait in which she differed from her elder sister, it was that her eyes, though equally as sinister in expression, had a more steady gaze; but when fixed upon you, they. produced the horrible effect of a snake that glares intently upon your countenance. The female gamblers, assembled in this den, were not entirely of that excessively low description which the reader may possibly have anticipated at the outset. There were several women amongst them who, by their appearance, were evidently the wives of small shopkeepers residing in the neighbourhood; but three or four of the youngest were prostitutes, who plied their hideous calling in that vicinage, and who, when they obtained a few pence or shillings, Habhed to this den in the hope of increasing by one vice the gains derived from another. If we were to take a peep into the front kitchen of the house to which we have introduced the reader, we should find ample preparations in progress for a supper that was to wind up the night’s amusements. A large table, twice the Gomichbooks (E(0) m