But had I known it, I had just taken a step that cost me afterwards more suffering than I even now care to think of. That simple little fiver, so easily borrowed at 120 per cent. per annum, and parted with directly to pay a debt that ought never to have become a debt! Well, I cannot say that it the was beginning of sorrows, but it certainly was the beginning of a great accession to the sorrows I already had. And I went home as glad as a boy who had just passed his first examination, as pleased as if I had just found five pounds instead of having added some rivets to the chain already round my neck. The broker was waiting for me when I got home--when I saw him I felt with a chill that he knew all that I had been doing to get his claim settled--and I greeted him manfully, but without effusion, lugging the money out of my pocket and pushing it over towards him. He counted it in silence and gave me a receipt, and then said, as if it was an after-thought, "Oh, a friend of mine asked me to give you this as I should be seeing you." _This_ was a summons to the Lambeth County Court to give reasons why I should not summarily pay an account of £7 odd incurred for attendance and medicine some five months before. What I thought as I gazed at the document I do not know, what I said were the banal words "All right, I'll attend to it." Yes _I_ could attend to it, returnable in a week's time too. My pay of £9. 3s. 4d. never seemed to go very far in the settling of the demands made upon me, but this month it seemed as if it were a mere farce to take it up at all, so little would it do. And then there were the poor rates, the gas account, the water rate, and a few other little things of that kind, to say nothing of the perfectly ridiculous yet nevertheless imperative necessity of obtaining food for six persons. However, as long as the demands were not made on the spur of the moment, as it were, I felt, like the immortal Micawber, that something might turn up, and so I went stolidly on my way, only carefully noting the date of my enforced appearance at the County Court. My chief difficulty at this troublous time, as it always was afterwards while I was a shopkeeper, was the absence of ready money, even in such small amounts as might suffice to pay the few pence required to pay my fare to and from the office on a wet day. This gave an exquisite relish to the farce of receiving not merely begging circulars, but visits of calling beggars, whether they boldly asked alms, or in a confidential manner requested the loan of a few shillings for a fortnight.