Sentence:  Thanks to that <WSD>penny</WSD> he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  In the United Kingdom and Ireland, a copper coin worth (240) of a pound sterling or Irish pound before decimalisation. Abbreviation: d.