The proprietor was ill, had been ailing for years, and now the shadows of eternity hovered around him. It was afternoon, and he was resting. I sat talking with his wife, an elderly woman, who sat at a machine making a new pair of knickers out of an old garment for a neighbour who had many children, the while a girl waited to have a new frock made out of an old dress that had been purchased probably at a street causeway auction, when, "A penn'orth of coal, please, Mrs. Jenkins!" The voice came from the coal depot. Mrs. Jenkins got up from her machine. "John, can you come down and attend to the shop?" I heard a step on the bedroom floor above me, and presently John, weak and gasping, descended the stairs, passed through the little room and through the glass door, and served the pennyworth of coal; came back, and, delivering the penny to his wife, gasped his way upstairs again. "How much coal do you give for a penny?" I asked Mrs. Jenkins. "Six pounds." "Why, that is above one shilling and sixpence halfpenny per hundredweight--nearly thirty-two shillings per ton," I said. "Yes, sir, it is dear buying it by penn'orths, but I can't sell it any cheaper." "How much do you give for a ton?" I asked, for I had not then been in the coal depot, or I need not have asked. "Oh, sir, we never get a ton; I buy it by the hundredweight from the trolly-man, and give one and fourpence the hundredweight." "Do you get full weight from the trolly-man?" "Well, we don't get anything over; but the London County Council has looked after them so sharply that they dare not give us short weight now." "But there is some dirt and slack in every sack you buy." "Yes, but I burn that myself with a bit of coke." She then continued: "I wish the poor people would always buy fourteen pounds." "Why?" "Well, it would be better for them, you see; we only charge them twopence farthing for fourteen pounds, so it comes cheaper to them." "Yes," I said, "they would save one halfpenny when they had bought eight lots of coal." "Yes, sir. I make just twopence on a hundredweight when they buy it like that." "No," I said, "you don't, for you cannot make eight complete lots out of one sack." "Fourteen pounds of coal, please, Mrs. Jenkins!" Again a voice came from the depot. "John! John!" Again John came wearily downstairs to weigh the coal. He returned with twopence halfpenny, which he handed to his wife, and said: "A farthing change."