W'll put yo' t' ri's. Y'll
'av' a luvly dress t'morro', an' a go' time. Wait t'l y'see the young
man we'll find y' t'morro'. Now go t'bed." Those twining fingers ceased
toying with the girl's hair and deftly slipped a protecting hook from
an all-too-easy eye in the back of the girl's blouse.
"Three years I've been a slavey for those stuck-up pigs," said the girl
in a subdued mutter, and then she went on to recount, quaintly and in a
half incoherent jumble, the salient facts of her life. I glanced at
Mick. He was leaning forward, peering through another slit. His face
had its old set look; stern, condemnatory. Twice I had had to reach out
and grip his wrist. He wanted to interfere; I was waiting--I knew not
for what.
As the muttering proceeded, the busy fingers of the old woman loosened
the clothes of the indifferent girl, who soon stood swaying by the side
of the bed in her chemise. Deftly the dirty quilt was slipped back and
the girlish form rolled into the creaking bed. The muttering went on
for a few minutes whilst the old woman sat watching the flushed face
and the tumbled hair on the pillow.
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