Sparrows Part 20

"Will he marry her, then?" asked Mavis.

"Good old 'B. C.'! Don't be a juggins; her boy's married already."

"Married!" gasped Mavis.

"Yes!" laughed Miss Allen. "And with a family."

When Mavis got over her astonishment at this last bit of information, she remarked:

"But you said she would be all right."

"So she will be, with luck," declared Miss Allen.

"What--what on earth do you mean?"

"What I say. Why, if every girl who got into trouble didn't get out of it, I don't know what would happen."

Mavis wondered what the other meant. Miss Allen continued:

"It's all a question of money and knowing where to go."

"Where to go?" echoed Mavis, who was more amazed than before.

"Of course, there's always a risk. That's how a young lady at 'Dawes''

died last year. But the nursing home she was in managed to hush it up."

Mavis showed her perplexity in her face.

Miss Allen, unaccustomed to such a fallow ear, could not resist giving further information of a like nature.

"You are green, 'B. C.' I suppose you'll be saying next you don't know what Mrs Stanley is."

"I don't."

"Go on!"

"What is she?"

"She's awfully well known; she gets hold of pretty young girls new to London for rich men: that's why she was so keen on you."

As Mavis still did not understand, Miss Allen explained the nature of the lucrative and time immemorial profession to which Mrs Stanley belonged.

For the rest of the way, Mavis was so astonished at all she had heard, that she did not say any more; she scarcely listened to Miss Allen, who jabbered away at her side.

On the way back, she spoke to Miss Allen upon a more personal matter.

"What did your friend mean last night by saying I'd been through Orgles's hands?"

"She thought he introduced you here?"

"What's that to do with it?"

"He sees all the young ladies who want rises and most of the young ladies who want work at 'Dawes'.' If he doesn't fancy them, and they want 'rises,' he tells them they have their latch-keys; if he fancies them, he asks what they're prepared to pay for his influence."

"Money?" asked Mavis.

"Money, no," replied Miss Allen scornfully.

"You mean--?" asked Mavis, flus.h.i.+ng.

"Of course. He's sent dozens of girls 'on the game.'"

"On the game?"

"On the streets, then."

Mavis's body glowed with the hot blood of righteous anger.

"It can't be," she urged.

"Can't be?"

"It isn't right."

"What's that to do with it?"

"It wouldn't be allowed."

"Who's to stop it?"

"But if it's wrong, it simply can't go on."

"Whose to stop it, I say?"

It was on the tip of Mavis's tongue to urge how He might interfere to prevent His sparrows being devoured by hawks; but this was not a subject which she cared to discuss with Miss Allen. This young person, taking Mavis's silence for the acquiescence of defeat, went on:

"Of course, on the stage or in books something always happens just in the nick of time to put things right; but that ain't life, or nothing like it."

"What is life, then?" asked Mavis, curious to hear what the other would say.

"Money: earning enough to live on and for a bit of a fling now and then."

"What about love?"

"That's a luxury. If the stage and books was what life really is, we shop-girls wouldn't like 'em so much."

Mavis relapsed into silence, at which Miss Allen said:

"Of course, in my heart, dear, I think just as you do and would like to have no 'truck' with Ada Potter or Rose Impett; but one has to know which side one's bread is b.u.t.tered. See?"