Nine typewriters were stuttering over nine news stories; four electric
fans were singing their siren songs of coolness; two telephone bells
were ringing; one office boy, new to his job, was hurtling through the
air on his way to the night city editor's desk, and the night city
editor was discharging him because he was not coming faster; the
managing editor was "calling down" a copy-reader; the editor-in-chief
was telling the foreign editor he wished he could find an intelligent
man to take the foreign desk; Mr. Nestor Hurd was swearing at Mr.
Godfrey Morris. In other words, it was nearly midnight in the offices
of the _Searchlight_.
I was sitting at my desk, feeling very low in my mind. That day, for
the first time in my three weeks' experience as a reporter, Mr. Hurd
had not given me an assignment. This was neither his fault nor mine. I
had written a dozen good stories for him, besides many more that were
at least up to the average. My assignments had taken me to all sorts
of places strangely unlike the convent from which I had graduated only
a month before--morgues, hospitals, police stations, the Tombs, the
Chinese quarter--and I had always brought back something, even, as
Mr. Gibson had once muttered, if it were merely a few typhoid germs.
Mr. Gibson did not approve of sending me to all those places. Only
that morning I had heard my chief tell Mr. Morris the Iverson kid was
holding down her job so hard that the job was yelling for help. This
was a compliment, for Mr. Hurd never joked about any one who worked
less than eighteen hours a day.
I knew he hated to see me idle now, even for a few hours, and I did
not like it myself. But we both had to bear it, for this had been one
of the July days when nothing happened in New York. Individuals were
born, and married, and died, and were run over by automobiles, as
usual; but, as Mr. Hurd said, "the element of human interest was
lacking." At such times the newspapers fill their space with
symposiums on "Can a Couple Live on Eight Dollars a Week?" or "Is
Suicide a Sin?" Or they have a moral spasm over some play and send the
police to suppress it. The night before Mr. Hurd had sent Gibson, his
star reporter, with a police inspector, to see a play he hoped the
_Searchlight_ could have a moral spasm over. Mr. Gibson reported that
the police inspector had left the theater wiping his eyes and saying
he meant to look after his daughters better hereafter; so the
_Searchlight_ could not have a spasm that time, and Mr. Hurd swore for
five minutes without repeating once. He was wonderful that way, but
not so gifted as Col. John Cartwell, the editor-in-chief, who used to
check himself between the syllables of his words to drop little oaths
in. Such conversation was new and terrible to me. I had never heard
any one swear before, and at first it deeply offended me. I thought a
convent girl should not hear such things, especially a girl who
intended to be a nun when she was twenty-one. But after a week or two
I discovered that the editors never meant anything by their rude
words; they were merely part of their breath.
To kill time that evening I wrote a letter to my mother--the first
long one I had sent her since I left my Western home. I wrote it on
one side of my copy paper, underlining my "u's" and overlining my
"n's," and putting little circles around all my periods, to show the
family I was a real newspaper woman at last. When I finished the
letter I put it in an office envelope with a picture of the
_Searchlight_ building on the outside, and began to think of going
home. But I did not feel happy. I realized by this time that in
newspaper work what one did yesterday does not matter at all; it is
what one does to-day that counts. In the convent we could bask for a
fortnight in the afterglow of a good recitation, and the memory of a
brilliant essay would abide, as it were, for months. But full well I
knew that if I gave Mr. Hurd the biggest "story" of the week on
Thursday, and did nothing on Friday, he would go to bed Friday night
with hurt, grieved feelings in his heart. This was Friday.
However, there was no sense in waiting round the office any longer, so
I put on my hat and left the _Searchlight_ building, walking across
City Hall Park to Broadway, where I took an open car up-town. I was
getting used to being out alone late at night; but I had not ceased to
feel an exultant thrill whenever I realized that I, May Iverson, just
out of the convent and only eighteen, was actually part of the night
life of great, wonderful, mysterious New York. Almost every man and
woman I saw interested me because of the story I knew was hidden in
each human heart; so to-night, as usual, I studied closely those
around me. But my three fellow-passengers did not look as if they had
any stories in them. They were merely tired, sleepy, perspiring men
going home after a day of hard work. I envied them. I had not done a
day's work, and I felt that I hardly deserved to rest. This thought
was still in my mind when I left the car at Twenty-fifth Street and
walked across Madison Square toward the house where I had rooms.
It was after midnight and very hot. The benches in the park still held
many men--most of them the kind that stay there because they have no
place else to go. There were a dozen tramps, some stretched at full
length and sound asleep, others talking together. There were men out
of work, trying to read the newspaper advertisements by the electric
light from the globes far above them. Over the park hung a yellow mist
that looked like fog but was merely heat, and from every side came
the deep mutter of a great city on a summer night. The men around me
were the types I had seen every time I crossed the Square, and, though
I was always sorry for them, they no longer made me feel sick with
sympathy, as they did at first.
But on a bench a little apart from the rest sat a girl who interested
me at once. I noticed her first because she was young and alone, and
then because she seemed to be in trouble. She was drooping forward in
her seat, with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands,
staring hard at a spot on the ground in front of her. I could not see
what it was. It looked like an ordinary brown stain. I usually walked
very fast when I was alone at night, but now I slackened my pace and
strolled toward the girl as slowly as I dared, studying her as I went.
I could not see much of her face, which was in the hollow of her
joined hands, but the way she was sitting--all bunched up--showed me
that she was sick or discouraged, or both. She wore a gray dress with
a very narrow skirt, and a wide, plain lace collar on the jacket. The
suit had a discouraged air, as if it had started out to be smart and
knew it had failed. Her hat was a cheap straw with a quill on it that
had once been stiff but was now limp as an unstarched collar, and the
coil of hair under it was neat and brown and wavy. Her plain lingerie
blouse was cut low at the neck and fastened with a big black bow, and
when I was closer to her I saw that both her shoes were broken at the
sides. Altogether, she looked very sick and very poor, and when she
changed her position a little to glance at a man who was passing,
something about her profile made me think of one of my classmates at
St. Catharine's.
I had tried to pass her, but now my feet would not take me. It was
simply impossible to ignore a girl who looked like Janet Trelawney and
who seemed to be in trouble. I saw when I got nearer that she was not
Janet, but she might have been--and, anyway, she was a young girl like
myself. We were taught at the convent that to intrude on another
person's grief, uninvited, is worse than to intrude at any other time.
Mere sympathy does not excuse it. But this looked like a special case,
for there was no one else around to do anything for the girl in gray
if she needed help. However, I did not speak to her at once. I merely
sat down on the bench beside her and waited to see if she would speak
to me.
She raised her head the minute she felt me there, and sat up and
stared at me with eyes that were big and dark and had a queer,
desperate expression in them. It seemed to startle her to know that
some one was so near her, but after she had looked at me her surprise
changed to annoyance, and she moved as if she meant to get up and go
away. That full glance at her had shown me what she was like. She was
not pretty. Her face was dreadfully pale, her nose was ordinary in
shape, and her firmly set, thin lips made her mouth look like a
straight line. I did not see how I could have thought of Janet
Trelawney in connection with her. However, I felt that I could not
drive her away from her seat, so I stopped her and begged her pardon
and asked if she was ill or had hurt herself in any way, and if I
could help her.
At first she did not answer me. She merely sat still and looked me
over slowly, as if she were trying to make up her mind about me. The
longer she looked the more puzzled she seemed to be. It had been
raining when I left home in the morning, so I had on a mackintosh and
a little soft rainy-day hat. I knew I did not look impressive, and it
was plain that the girl in gray did not think much of me. At last she
asked what I wanted, and her voice sounded hard and indifferent--even
rude. I was disappointed in that, too, as well as in her face. It
would have been more interesting, of course, to help a refined,
educated girl. There was no doubt, however, that she needed help of
some kind, so I merely repeated in different words what I had said to
her at first. She laughed then--a laugh I did not like at all--and
stared at me again in her queer way, as if she could not make me out.
She seemed to be more puzzled over me than I was over her.
She kept on staring at me a long time with her singular eyes, that had
dark circles under them. At last she asked me if I was a "society
agent" or anything of that sort, and when I said I was not she asked
how I happened to be out so late, and what I was doing. Her voice was
as queer as her eyes--low and husky. I did not like her manner. It
almost seemed as if she thought I had no right to be there, so I told
her rather coldly that I was a reporter on the _Searchlight_ and that
I was on my way home from the office. As soon as I said that her whole
manner changed. I have noticed this quick change in others when they
hear that I am a newspaper woman. Some are pleased and some are not,
but few remain cold and detached. The girl in gray actually looked
relieved about something. She laughed again, a husky, throaty laugh
that sounded, however, much nicer and more human than before, and gave
me a good-natured little push.
"Oh," she said, "all right. Better beat it now. So-long." And she
waved me away as if she owned the park bench. I hesitated. I was sorry
now that I had stopped, and I wanted to go; but it seemed impossible
to leave her there. I sat still for a moment, thinking it over, and
suddenly she leaned toward me and advised me very earnestly not to
linger till the roundsman came to take my pedigree. She said he was
letting her alone because he knew she was only out of the hospital two
days and up against it, but the healthy thing for me was to move on
while the walking was good.
I was sorry she used so much slang, but of course the fact that she
was unrefined and uneducated made her situation harder, and demanded
even more sympathy from those better off. What she had said about the
hospital and being "up against it" proved that I had done right to
stop.
I told her I was going home in a few minutes, but that I wanted to
talk to her first if she did not mind, and that there was no reason
why I could not sit in the park if she could. She looked at me and
laughed again as if I had made a joke, and the laugh brought on an
attack of coughing which kept her busy for a full minute. When she had
stopped I pointed out my home to her. It was on the opposite side of
the Square, but we could see it quite plainly from where we sat. We
could even see the windows of my rooms, which faced the park. The girl
in gray looked up at them a long time.
"Gee!" she said, "you're lucky. Think of havin' a joint to fall into,
and not knowin' enough to go to it when you got a chance." She added,
"It wouldn't take me long to hop there if I owned the latch-key."
I asked her where she lived, and she laughed again and swung one knee
over the other as we were taught in the convent not to do, and
muttered that her present address was Madison Square Park, but she
hoped it would not be permanent. Then she got up and said, "So-long,"
and started to go. I got up, too, and caught her arm. Her last words
had simply thrilled me. I had read about girls being sick and out of
work and being dismissed from the hospital with no money and no place
to go to. But to read of them in books is one thing, and to see one
with your own eyes, to have one actually beside you, is another
thing--and very different. My heart swelled till it hurt; so did my
throat. The girl shook off my hand.
"Say," she said, and her voice was rude and cross again--"say, kid,
what's the matter with you? You ain't got nothin' on me. Beat it, will
you, or let me beat it. I can't set here and chin."
I held her arm. I knew what was the matter. She was too proud to ask
for help. I knew another thing, too. There was a story in her, the
story of what happens to the penniless girl in New York; and I could
get it from her and write it and put the matter on a business basis
that would mean as much to her as to me. Then I would have my story,
the story I had not got to-day, and she would have a room and shelter,
for of course I would give her some money in advance. My mind worked
like lightning. I saw exactly how the thing could be done.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Forgive me--but you're hungry, aren't you?"
She stared at me again with that queer look of hers. Then she answered
with simple truth. "You bet I am," she muttered.
"Very well," I said, and I put all the will-power I had in my voice.
"Come with me and get something to eat. Then tell me what has happened
to you. Perhaps I can make a newspaper story of it. If I can, we'll
divide the space rates."
The girl in gray hung back. I could see that she wanted to go with
me, but that for some reason she was afraid.
"Say," she said at last, "you're kidding ain't you? You don't look
like a reporter nor act like one. Honest, you got me guessin'."
I did not like that very much, but I could not blame her. I knew it
required more than three weeks to make one look like a real newspaper
woman. I opened my hand-bag and took out one of the new cards I had
had engraved, with _The New York Searchlight_ down in the left-hand
corner. It looked beautiful. I could see that at last the girl in gray
was impressed. She stood with the card in her hand, staring down at it
and thinking. Finally she shrugged her shoulders and clapped me on the
back with a force that hurt me.
"Al-l-l _right_!" she said, drawling out the first word and shooting
the second at me like a bullet from a pistol. "I got the goods. I'm
just out of Bellevue. I'll give you a spiel about the way those guys
treated me. I'll tell you about the House of Detention, too, and the
judges and the police. Oh, I got a story, all right, all right. I'll
give it to you straight."
She was pulling me along the street as she talked. She seemed to be in
a great hurry all of a sudden, and in good spirits, but I realized how
weak she was when I saw that even to walk half a block made her breath
come in little gasps.
"It's the eats first, ain't it?" she asked; and I told her it
certainly was. Then I asked her where we were going, for it was clear
that she was headed for some definite place.
"Owl-wagon," she told me, and saved her breath for the walk. I said we
would take a car, but she pointed to the "owl-wagon" standing against
the curb only a square away. The sight of it seemed to give her fresh
strength. She made for it like a carrier-pigeon going home. When we
reached it she sat down on the curbstone and nodded affably to the man
inside the wagon. He nodded back at her and then came through the door
and down the wagon steps to stare at me.
"Hello," he said to the girl in gray. "Heard you was sick. Glad to see
you round again. What'll you eat?"
She did not waste breath on him, but made a gesture toward me. For a
moment I think she could not speak.
"Give her a large glass of milk first," I told the man--"not too
cold." When I handed it to her I advised her to drink it slowly, but
she did not. It vanished in one long gulp. While the man was filling
another glass for her I asked her what she wanted for supper. Eating
at the "owl" was a new experience to me. I began to enjoy it, and to
examine the different kinds of food that stood on the little shelves
around the sides of the wagon. The girl in gray looked at me over the
rim of her glass.
"What'll you stand for?" she asked.
I laughed and told her to choose for herself; she could have
everything in the wagon if she wanted it. Before the words were past
my lips she was on the top step, selecting sandwiches and pie and
ordering the man around as if she owned the outfit. She took three
sandwiches, one of every kind he had, and two pieces of pie, and some
doughnuts. When she had all she wanted she got down from the wagon and
backed carefully to the curb, balancing the food in her hands. Then
she sat down again and smiled at me for the first time. Something
about that smile made me want to cry; but she seemed almost happy.
"Ain't this a bit of all right?" she asked, with her mouth full. She
told the proprietor that his pies had less sawdust in them than last
year and that he must have put some real lemon in one of them by
mistake. While they talked I continued to inspect the inside of the
wagon, but I heard the owl-man ask her a question in a whisper that
must have reached across the street. "Say, Mollie, who's your friend?"
he wanted to know.
The girl in gray told him it was none of his business. Her speech
sounded strangely like that of Mr. Hurd. There were several of his
favorite words in it. I sighed. She was a dreadfully disappointing
girl, but she had been starving, and I had only to look at her face
and her poor torn shoes to feel sympathy surge up in me again. When
she was finishing her last piece of pie she beckoned to me to come and
sit beside her on the curb.
"Now for the spiel," she said, and her husky voice sounded actually
gay. "You got the key. Wind me up. I'll run 's long's I can."
I looked around. The street was deserted except for two men who stood
beside the owl-wagon munching sandwiches. They stared hard at us, but
did not come near us. There was a light in the wagon, too, by which I
might have made some notes. But I did not want to get my story at one
o'clock in the morning out on a public avenue. I wanted a room and a
reading-lamp and chairs and a table. Six months later I could write
any story on the side of a steam-engine while the engine was in
motion, but this was not then. Besides, while the girl was eating I
had had an inspiration. I asked her if she had really meant what she
said about having no place to go but the park; and when she answered
that she had, I asked her where she would have gone that night if I
had not come along. She looked at me, hesitated a moment, and then
turned sulky.
"Aw, what's the use?" she said. "Get busy. Do I give you the story, or
don't I?"
I told her she did. Then I produced my inspiration. "Aren't there
homes for the friendless," I asked her, "where girls are taken in for
a night when they have no money?"
The girl in gray said there were, and sat eyeing me with her lower jaw
lax and a weary, discouraged air.
"All right," I said, briskly; "let's go to one."
It took her a long time to understand what I meant. I had to explain
over and over that I wanted to go with her and see exactly how girls
were received and treated in such places and what sort of rooms and
food they got, and that I must play the part of a penniless and
friendless girl myself to get the facts; for of course if the people
in the "refuge" knew I was a reporter everything would be colored for
me. At last my companion seemed to grasp my meaning. She got up,
wabbling a little on her weak knees, and started toward Twenty-third
Street.
"Come on, then," she muttered, and added something about a "funeral"
and some one being "crazy." She said the place we were going to was on
First Avenue, not very far away, but I stopped a car and made her get
into it. As we rode across town she told me the little she knew about
the refuge. She said girls who went there paid a few cents for their
rooms if they had money, but if not they were sometimes taken in
without charge. She said breakfast was five cents and dinner ten or
more, according to what one ate. The house closed at midnight, and she
was afraid we could not get in; but she had been there twice before,
and the matron knew she was sick, so perhaps she would admit us. I was
to be Kittie Smith, a friend of hers from Denver.
I did not like the appearance of the place very much when we finally
reached it. It was like a prison, I thought, and its black windows
seemed to glower at us menacingly as we looked at them. We climbed
the worn steps that led to the front door; there were only a few of
them, but I had to help the girl in gray. When we reached the last
one, she rang the bell labeled "Night bell." Beside it a brass sign
that needed polishing told us the institution was a "Home for
Friendless Girls." We could hear the bell jangling feebly far inside
the house, as if it hung at the end of a loose wire, but for a long
time no one answered it. The girl in gray sat down on the top step
while I rang the bell again. Then at last steps came along the hall,
the door opened an inch, and an old woman peered out at us. We could
see nothing of her but her eyes and a bit of white hair. The eyes
looked very cross, and the old woman's voice matched them when she
spoke to us. She asked what we wanted and explained in the same breath
that the house was closed and that it was too late to get in. The girl
in gray leaned back against the door so the old woman could not close
it, and said in a faint voice that she was sick.
"You remember me, Mrs. Catlin," she added, coaxingly. "Sure you do.
I'm Mollie Clark. I been here before."
Mrs. Catlin opened the door another inch, grudgingly, and surveyed
Mollie Clark.
"Humph!" she said. "It's you again, is it?"
She hesitated a moment and again looked Mollie Clark over. Then she
flung the door wide without a word and let us into a long hall with a
bare floor, whitewashed walls, and a flight of stairs at the end of
it. A gas-light, turned very low, burned at the rear, and the whole
house smelled of carbolic acid. It seemed to me that no girl's
situation anywhere could be as forlorn as that place looked. The old
woman picked up a candle which stood on a table near the door and lit
it at the solitary gas-jet. Then she motioned to us to follow her and
started rheumatically up-stairs, grumbling under her breath all the
way. She said it was against the rules to let us in at that hour, and
she didn't know what the superintendent would say in the morning, and
that there was only one room empty, anyhow, and we would have to be
content with it. She led us up three flights of stairs and into a
little hall-room at the front of the house. It had one window, which
was open. Its furniture was a small bed, a wash-stand with a white
bowl and pitcher, one towel, a table, and two chairs. My eyes must
have lit up when they saw the table. That was what I wanted, and I did
not care much about anything else.
Mrs. Catlin set the candle down on the table, whispered something
about taking our "records" in the morning, warned us not to talk and
disturb others, and went away without saying good night. The minute
the door closed behind her I sat down at the table and got out my
pencil and a fat note-book. I did not even stop to take off my hat,
but Mollie Clark removed hers and threw it in a corner. Her hair, as I
had suspected, was very pretty--soft and brown and wavy. She came and
sat down opposite me at the table and waited for me to begin.
At first when we got into the room I had felt rather queer--almost
nervous. But the minute I had my pencil in my hand and saw my
note-book open before me I forgot the place we were in and was
comfortable and happy. I smiled at Mollie Clark and told her to tell
me all about herself--the whole story of her life, so that I could use
as much or as little of it as I wanted to. Of course, she did not know
how to begin. People never do. She rested her elbows on the table and
her chin on her hands, which seemed to be her favorite attitude, and
sat quite still, thinking. To help her I asked a few questions. That
started her, and at last she grew interested and more at ease and
began to talk.
I will admit right here that before fifteen minutes had passed I was
in an abyss of black despair. Someway I simply could not get hold of
that story, and when I did begin to get hold of it I was frightened.
It was not because she used so much slang. I understood that, or most
of it. But some of the things she said I did not understand at all,
and when I showed I did not, or asked her what they meant, she was not
able to explain them. She put them in a different way, but I did not
get them that way, either; and she looked so surprised at first, and
so discouraged herself toward the end, that at last I stopped asking
her questions and simply wrote down what she told me, whether I knew
what it meant or not. After a time I began to feel as if some one in
a strange world was talking to me in an unknown tongue--which little
by little I began to comprehend. It seemed a horrible sort of world,
and the words suggested unspeakable things. Once or twice I felt sick
and giddy--as if something awful was coming toward me in a dark room
and would soon take hold of me. Occasionally the girl leaned across
the table to look at my notes and see what I was putting down, and I
kept pushing my chair farther and farther away from her. I hoped it
would not hurt her feelings, but I could not endure her near me.
For five minutes the story went beautifully. She had run away from
home when she was only sixteen--three years before; and the home had
been a farm, just as it is in books. She had gone to Denver--the farm
was thirty miles from Denver, but not large enough to be a ranch--and
she had worked for a while in a big shop and afterward in an office.
She had never learned typewriting or shorthand or expert filing, nor
anything of that kind, so she folded circulars and addressed
envelopes, and got five dollars a week for doing it. She said it was
impossible to live on five dollars a week, and that this was the
beginning of all her trouble.
After that she talked about her life in Chicago and Detroit and
Buffalo and Boston and New York, and about men who had helped her and
women who had robbed her, and police graft, and a great many things I
had never even heard of.
For a long time I wrote as fast as my hand could write. My head seemed
to be spinning round on my shoulders. I felt queerer and queerer, and
more and more certain I was in a nightmare; the worst part of the
nightmare was the steady husky whisper of the girl's voice--for of
course she had to whisper. At moments it seemed like the hissing of a
snake, and the girl looked like a snake, too, with her set straight
mouth and her strange, brilliant eyes. At last, after a long time, I
stopped writing and leaned back in my chair and looked at her. At the
same time she stopped talking and looked back at me, and for a minute
neither of us spoke. Then she bunched forward in her chair and sat
staring at the floor, exactly the way she had done in the park.
"It's no go," she said, in a queer, flat voice. "You ain't gettin' it,
are you?"
For a moment I did not answer her. It seemed someway that I could not.
I saw by her face how she felt--sick with disappointment. She muttered
some words to herself. They sounded like unpleasant words; I was glad
I did not hear them clearly. She had counted on her share of the space
rates for my story. She sat still for quite a long time. Once or twice
she looked at me as if she did not understand why I was allowed to
encumber the earth when I was so stupid. Then she shrugged her
shoulders, and finally she smiled at me in a sick kind of way. I
suppose she remembered that, after all, I had given her a supper. At
last she rose and picked up her hat and put it on.
"I'll blow out of here," she said. "Sorry you're out a meal for
nothin'."
She turned to go, and I felt more emotions in that moment than I had
ever felt before. There were dozens of them, but confusion and horror
and pity seemed to be the principal ones. I asked her to wait a
minute, and I went to my hand-bag and took out my purse. There was not
very much in it. I had been paid on Saturday, and this was Friday, so
of course I had spent most of my money. But there were six dollars
left, and I gave her five of them.
"What for?" she asked, and stared at me as she had done in the park.
"For the story," I said. "On account. I'll give you the rest when it's
printed."
She took the bill and stood still, looking down at it as it lay in her
hand. Then suddenly she threw it on the floor.
"Aw, say," she muttered, "what's the use? It's like takin' candy from
a kid. You'll need that money," she added, touching the bill with the
toe of her ragged shoe as she spoke. "You'll sure need it to get back
where you come from. You didn't get that story. You didn't get a word
of it."
The look of the ragged shoe as she put it out and pushed the money
away, and the look on her face as she spoke, made my heart turn over
with pity for her. I picked up my note-book and held it toward her.
"Didn't I get it?" I asked. "Look at this."
She took the note-book and turned the pages, at first slowly and
without hope, then with interest. Finally, without raising her eyes,
she sat down by the flickering candle and read them all. While she
read I watched her, and as I looked I realized that there was another
Watcher in the little room with us--one who stood close beside her,
waiting, and who would wait only a few weeks. I knew now what her
cough meant, and her husky voice, and the stain in the park, and the
red spots that came and went on her thin cheeks.
When she had finished reading the notes she laid down the book and
smiled at me. "Kiddin' me again, wasn't you?" she said, quietly. "You
got it all here, ain't you?"
"Yes," I said. "I've got the story."
"Sure you have," she corroborated. "That Bellevue stuff's great. And
take it from me, your editor will eat up the story about Holohan, with
the names _an'_ the dates _an'_ the places. Here's six girls will
swear to what I told you. And Miss Bates, the probation officer,
she'll stand for it, too. I'd have give it to a paper long ago if I'd
known who to go to."
An attack of coughing stopped her words. After it she leaned against
the table for a moment, exhausted. Then she bent and picked up the
bill from the floor. Last of all she took my pencil out of my hand,
wrote a name and address in my note-book, and laid the book back on
the table.
"Me for the outer darkness," she said. "That's where I'll be. I'll
stay in till four to-morrow afternoon, if your editor wants anything
else."
She hesitated a moment, as if struggling with words that wouldn't
come. "Thanks for the banquet," she got out, at last. "So-long."
I looked straight into her strange eyes. There were many things I
wanted to say to her, but I didn't know how. I felt younger than I had
ever felt before, and ignorant and tongue-tied.
"You stay here," I said. "I'll go home."
The girl's eyes looked big and round as she stared at me. She held up
the five-dollar bill in her hand.
"Stay here," she gasped, "when I got money to go somewhere else? D'ye
think I'm crazy? _You_ got to stay an' get the rest of yer story. _I_
ain't! See?"