“You’re fond of children?” commented Mavis.

The girl nodded, the while she bit her lip.

“I can see you’ve had baby brothers or sisters,” remarked Mavis.

“How do you know?”

“By the way you hold him.”

“What do you think of Gertie?” asked Lil quickly.

“Who’s Gertie?”

“Mr Gussle.  Upstairs we always call him Gertie.”

“I can’t make him out,” said Mavis, at which she learned from Lil that Mr Gussle loathed his present means of earning a livelihood; also, that he hungered for respectability, and that, to satisfy his longing, he frequented, in his spare time, a tin tabernacle of evangelical leanings.  Mavis also learned that the girls upstairs, knowing of Mr Gussle’s proclivities, tempted him with cigarettes, spirits, and stimulating fleshly allurements.

One day, when Mavis had left her sleeping baby to go out for a few minutes, she returned to find Lil nursing her boy, the while tears fell from her eyes.  Mavis pretended not to notice the girl’s grief.  She busied herself about the room, till Lil recovered herself.  Later, when Mavis was getting seriously pressed for money, she came across odd half sovereigns in various parts of the room, which she rightly suspected had been put there by her friend.  For all Lil’s entreaties, Mavis insisted on returning the money.  Lil constantly wore a frock to which Mavis took exception because it was garish.  One day she spoke to Lil about it.

“Why do you so often wear that dress?” she asked.

“Don’t you like it?”

“Not a bit.  It’s much too loud for you.”

“I don’t like it myself.”

“Then why wear it?”

“It’s my ‘lucky dress.’”

“Your what?”

“‘Lucky’ dress.  Don’t you know all we girls have their ‘lucky’ dresses?”

This was news to Mavis.

“You mean a dress that—­”

“Brings us luck with the gentlemen,” interrupted Lil.

The subject thus opened, Lil became eloquent upon many aspects of her occupation.  Presently she said: 

“It isn’t always the worst girls who are ‘on the game.’”

“Indeed!”

“So many are there through no fault of their own.”

“How is that?” asked Mavis.

“They get starved into it.  It’s all these big shops and places.  They pay sweating wages, and to get food the girls pick up men.  That’s the beginning.”

Mavis nodded assent.  She remembered all she had heard and seen on this matter when at “Dawes’.”

“And the small employers are getting just as bad.  And of them the women are the worst.  They don’t care how much they grind poor girls down.  If anything, I b’lieve they enjoy it.  And if once a girl goes wrong, they’re the ones to see she don’t get back.  Why is it they hate us so?”

“Give it up,” replied Mavis, who added, “I should think it wanted an awful lot of courage.”