CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
HOW TOM DRIFT GETS LOWER STILL.
Two years passed.
They were, without exception, the dullest two years I, or, I venture to say, any watch made, ever spent.

There I lay, run down, tarnished and neglected, on the pawnbroker's shelf, never moved, never used, never thought of.

Week followed week, and month month, and still no claimant for me came.
Other articles on the shelves beside me came and went, some remaining only a day, some a week, but I survived them all.

Even my friend the chain took his departure, and left me without a soul to speak to.
None of the hundreds of tickets handed in bore the magic number 2222, which would have released me from my ignoble custody, and, in time, I gave up expecting it, and settled down to the old-fogeydom of my position, and exacted all the homage due to the "father of the shop" from my restless companions.
My place was at the end of a long shelf, next to the screen dividing the shop from the office, and my sole amusement during those two dreary years was peeping through a crack and watching my master's customers.
They were of all sorts and all conditions, and many of them became familiar.
There was the little girl, for instance, the top of whose bonnet just reached as high as the counter, who, regularly every Monday morning, staggered in under the weight of a bundle containing her father's Sunday clothes, and, as regularly every Saturday evening, returned to redeem them.

It was evident her respectable parent did not attend many evening parties between those two days, for I never remember his sending for them except at the regular times.
Then there was the wretched drunkard, who crept in stealthily, with now a child's coat, now a picture, now a teapot; and with the money thus raised walked straight across the road to the public-house.