Between the particular public-houses and pawnbrokers' shops which flanked Church Alley were dotted other notable places of business. To wit, Mr. Joseph Loveday's second-hand bookshop, to which we have been already introduced, a sweet-stuff shop, a cook-shop, a wardrobe-shop, and a printer's office, in which the master worked at case and press as his own journeyman. To the small boys and girls in the vicinity of Church Alley these shops were a great attraction, and they patronized them generously. The wardrobe-shop, which, like the bookshop, dealt only in second-hand goods, was as alluring to the grown-up folk of the female sex as it was to the youngsters, and longing were the eyes cast upon the faded silks and satins displayed in the dingy window. A shrewd, wise woman was Mrs. Peeper, the keeper thereof, a woman deeply and strangely versed in the desires and temptations of the lowly female heart. A woman of attainments, too, who might have won a name as a writer of fiction had her steps been led in that direction. In her shop-window would be displayed a much-worn and frayed satin dress, with a train so long as to set female mouths watering, and to this dress would be attached the legend, "From the wardrobe of her Royal Highness the P----ss of W----s." The legend set afloat would go the rounds, and girls and women would flock to gaze at the dress which had once adorned the figure of a royal princess. At another time Mrs. Peeper would arrange in her window several pairs of shoes, boots, and silk stockings, which she would announce as "Direct from B----cking----m P----l----ce;" at another time a flounced petticoat from a duchess; at other times hats, feathers, gloves, trimmings, capes, and various items of vanity, which she would cunningly bait with tempting legends to catch her fish. Mrs. Peeper might be accounted somewhat of a magician, for she filled the minds of many females with fancies which played their parts in dreams, changing charwomen into duchesses, young girls into princesses, and garrets into palaces. Mrs. Peeper seldom failed to land her fish, and the royal garments would be sold at singularly moderate prices, and, moreover, payment taken at so much per week.