Mattie retired into the street--it was a Saturday night, and there were many customers abroad--she was doing a flourishing trade, when a tall youth caught her by the arm, and dragged her round the corner of the first street. "Oh! don't pinch my arm so, Master Hinchford." "What's the twelve and sixpence for, Mattie--not for the--not for the----" "Yes, the _broach_! I've been a-saving up, and keeping myself down for it, and now it's easy on my mind." "I won't have it. I've been thinking about it, and I won't have it, Mattie." "Please do. I've been trying so hard to wipe _that_ off. I'm quite well now. I've got the c'nexion all right, and shall save it all up agin, and the winter's arf over, and when Miss Wesden comes back, you can buy her another brooch with it, and nobody disapinted." The youth laughed, and coloured, and shook his head. "I won't take twelve and sixpence from you, I tell you. Why, Mattie, you don't know the value of money, or you'd never fling it away like this. Why, it's a fortune to you." "No--it's been a _weight_--that twelve and six, somehow. I've been a thief until to-night--now it's wiped clean. Don't try to make me a thief agin by giving it on me back. Oh! don't please stop my trade like this!" "Well, I shall make you out in time, Mattie--_perhaps_." Master Hinchford pocketed the money, and walked away slowly. Mattie returned to her "c'nexion." Mr. Hinchford sat and philosophized to himself all the evening on the impracticability of arriving at a thorough understanding of human nature, as exemplified in "girl-kind." CHAPTER VI. THE END OF THE PROLOGUE. Hard times set in after that night. The winter was half over, Mattie had said; but the worst half was yet to come, and for that she, with many thousands like her, had made but little preparation. The worst half of the frost of that year set in like a blight upon the London streets, froze the gutters, raised the price of coals, sent provisions up to famine figures, cut off all the garden stuff, and threw such fugitive traders as Mattie completely out of work. Hers became a calling that required capital now; even the greengrocers' shops, Borough way, were scantily stocked--the market itself was not what it used to be when things were flourishing, and oh! the prices that were asked in those times!