"If you have n’t any money and I haven’t any money, I ’m inclined to think the ducks will not fly well to-day," I mused; for the last time we had been to the Touraine the head waiter—a most tiresome person—told me we could n’t charge anything more there until we paid our bills. "I suppose you would just sit on the curbstone and starve," Berrisford sniffed. And as we walked along I saw that he had some kind of a plan. He took me through one of the queer little alleys with which Boston is honeycombed and out into a noisy, narrow, foreign-looking street, lined with shabby second-hand stores and snuffy restaurants,—the kind that have red tablecloths. At first I thought it was Berri’s intention to get luncheon in one of these places, although I did n’t see how even he could manage it very well on eight cents. However, I asked no questions. Suddenly he stopped and took off his sleeve-links. Then we walked on a few steps and went into a pawnbroker’s. It sounds absurd, but when I discovered what Berrisford was about to do I felt curiously excited and embarrassed. Of course I knew that lots of people pawn things, but I had never seen it done before, and like most of the things you can think about and read about in cold blood, I found that it made my heart beat a good deal faster actually to do it. In fact, I did n’t care to do it at all, and told Berrisford so in an undertone; but he said,— "Why not? There ’s nothing wrong in it. You own something more or less valuable and you happen for the moment to need something else; why should n’t you exchange them? If the soiled vampire who runs this place (what’s become of him, anyhow?) would give me two small roasted ducks and some bread and butter and currant jelly and two little cups of coffee and a waiter to serve them, and a mediæval banquet hall to eat them in, and a perfectly awful orchestra behind a thicket of imitation palm-trees to play Hungarian rhapsodies while we ate—instead of five dollars and a half, I should be just as well pleased; because it will amount to about the same thing in the end." Just then the proprietor of the shop emerged from behind a mound of trousers and overcoats and shuffled toward us very unwillingly, it seemed to me. But Berrisford said he was always like that.