51�Թ�

Not of themselves, perhaps, though they were squalid drabs long ere they were ripe for the sevenpenny church: but by comparison with the clean, remote shop-girls who were visible through the broad windows in the outer streets.

We may suppose, for example, sixpences to have been coined first, then sevenpenny and eightpenny pieces, and so on up to a shilling, then pieces representing thirteen, fourteen and fifteen pence, and so on up to a half-crown or crown; but all the intervening denominations between the sixpence and the shilling, and between the shilling and the half-crown, were found practically of little use.

The Examiner has let down its price from a tenpenny to a sevenpenny.

Almost every available bit of wall-space was taken up with book-cases groaning under the weight of volumes of all sizes and ages, from the leatherbound tomes of the late Stuart period to the modern "sevenpenny."

There were books about, many books; sevenpenny editions of novels that hadn’t fallen quite stillborn from the press, and one or two by Wells and Lawrence and Somerset Maugham.