But no one who has never been blessed with only a penny to spend and a mighty hunger behind it, can understand the interest with which he stood there and through the glass watched the bread, having no penny and only the hunger.

There is at least one powerful bond, though it may not always awake sympathy, between mudlark and monarch--that of hunger.

No one has yet written the poetry of hunger--has built up in verse its stairs of grand ascent--from such hunger as Gibbie's for a penny-loaf up--no, no, not to an alderman's feast; that is the way down the mouldy cellar-stair--but up the white marble scale to the hunger after righteousness whose very longings are bliss.
Behind the counter sat the baker's wife, a stout, fresh-coloured woman, looking rather dull, but simple and honest.

She was knitting, and if not dreaming, at least dozing over her work, for she never saw the forehead and eyes which, like a young ascending moon, gazed at her over the horizon of the opaque half of her door.
There was no greed in those eyes--only much quiet interest.

He did not want to get in; had to wait, and while waiting beguiled the time by beholding.