me, and it ought to suit you. It is just as well you should get her out of the court after dark, so that she won't be recognised in her new things, and you will get off without being questioned. I shall be there waiting for you, but if anything should detain me, which is not likely, wait till I come.'
When he had gone the girl flung her bonnet into a corner, then knelt down and made up the fire; then she produced two mutton chops from her pocket and placed them in the frying-pan over it.
'Good ones,' she said. 'I got them at a swell shop near Buckingham Palace; they were outside, just handy. Well, I s'pose them's the last I shall nick; that is a good job.' She then took a jug out of the cupboard. 'I have got sixpence left out of that half-crown I changed yesterday. We have got bread enough, so I will bring in a quart.'
The woman nodded. She had of late, as she had told Warbles, quite determined she would not keep the girl much longer with her, but the suddenness with which the change had come about had been so unexpected that as yet she hardly realised it. Sally was a limb, no doubt. She had got quite beyond her control, and although the petty thievings had been at first encouraged by her, the aptness of her pupil, the coolness and audacity with which she carried them out, and the perfect unconcern with which she started on the dangerous operation of changing the counterfeit money, had troubled and almost frightened her. As the girl had said, she had never been kind to her, had often brutally beaten her, and usually spoke of her as if she were the plague of her life, but the thought that she would now be without her altogether touched her keenly, and when the girl returned she found her in tears.
'Hello! what's up?' she asked in surprise. 'You ain't been a drinking as early as this, have you?' for tears were to Sally's mind associated with a particular phase of drunkenness.
The woman shook her head.
'Yer don't mean to say as you are crying because I am going?' Sally went on in a changed voice. 'I should have thought there was nothing in the world you would be so pleased at as getting rid of me.'
'I have said so in a passion, may be, Sally. You are a limb, there ain't no doubt of that; but it ain't your fault, and I might have done for you more than I have, if it had not been for drink. I don't know what I shall do without you.'
'It will make a difference in the way of food, though,' the girl said; 'I am a onener to eat: still I don't think you can get rid of the dumps as well as I can. You got two months last time you tried it.'
'It ain't that, Sally, though I dare say you think it is, but I shall feel lonesome, awful lonesome, without you to sit of an evening to talk to. You have been like a child to me, though I ain't been much of a mother to you, and you mayn't believe it, Sally, but it is gospel truth, as I have been fond of you.'
'Have you now?' the girl said, leaning forward eagerly in her chair. 'I allus thought you hated me. Why didn't you say so? I wouldn't have 'greed to go with that man if I had thought as you wanted me. I don't care for the dresses and that sort of thing, though I should like to get taught something, but I would give that up, and if you like I will go by myself and meet him where he said, and give him back that ten pound, and say I have changed my mind and I am going to stop with you.'
'No, it is better that you should go, Sally; this ain't no place for a girl, and I ain't no woman to look after one. I have been a-thinking some months it was time you went; it didn't matter so much as long as you was a kid, but you are growing up now, and it ain't to be expected as you would keep straight in such a place as this; besides, any day you might get nabbed, and three months in quod would finish you altogether. So you see, Sally, I am glad and I am sorry. Warbles ain't the man I would put you in charge of if I had my way. He has told you hisself what he means to do with you, and I would a lot rather you had been going out into service; only of course no one would take you as you are, it ain't likely. Still if you keep your eyes open, and you are a sharp girl, you may make money by it; but mind me, Sally, money is no good by itself, nor fine clothes, nor nothing.
'It was fine clothes and drink as brought me to what I am. I was a nice tidy-looking girl when Warbles first knew me, and if it hadn't been for clothes and drink I might have been a respectable woman, and perhaps missus of a snug public now. Well, perhaps your chances will be as good as mine was. I have two bits of advice to give yer. When you have finished that pint of beer you make up your mind never to touch another drop of it. The second is, don't you listen to what young swells say to yer. You look out for an honest man who wants to make you his wife, and you marry him and make him a good wife, Sally.'
The girl nodded. 'That is what I mean to do, and when I get a comfortable home you shall come and live with us.'
'It wouldn't do, Sally; by that time I reckon I shall be lying in a graveyard, but if I wasn't it would not do nohow. No man will put up with a drunken woman in his house, and a drunken woman I shall be to the end of my life – but there, them chops are ready, Sally, and it would be a sin to let them spoil now you have got them.'
When the meal was over, and Sally had finished her glass of beer, she turned it over.
'That is the last of them,' she said; 'I don't care for it one way or the other. Now tell me about that cove, who is he?'
'He is what he says – a betting man, and was when I first knew him; I don't know what his real name is, but I don't expect it's Warbles. He was a swell among them when I first knew him, and spent his money free, and used to look like a gentleman. I was in a house at Newmarket at the time, and whenever the races was on I often used to see him. Well, I left there, and did not come across him for two years; when I did, I had just come out of gaol; I had had two months for taking money from the till. I met him in the street, and he says to me, "Hello, Kitty! I was sorry to hear that you had been in trouble; what are you doing?"'
'What should I be doing?' says I; 'there ain't much chance of my getting another situation after what has happened. I ain't a-doing nothing yet, for I met a friend on the day I came out who gave me a couple of quid, but it is pretty nigh gone.' 'Well, look here,' says he, 'I have got a kid upon my hands: it don't matter whose kid it is, it ain't mine; but I have got to keep it. It has been with a woman for the last three years, and she has died. I don't care how it is brought up so as it is brought up; it is nothing to me how she turns out so that she lives. I tell you what I will do. I will give you ten pounds to furnish a room and get into it, and I will pay you five shillings a week as long as it lives; and if you ever get hard up and want a couple of pounds you can have 'em, so as you don't come too often.'
'Well, I jumped at the offer, and took you, and I will say Warbles has been as good as his word. It wasn't long before I was turned out of my lodging for being too drunk and noisy for the house, and it wasn't more than a couple of years before I got pretty nigh as low as this. I had got to know a good many queer ones when I was in the public line, and I chanced to drop across one of them, and when I met him one day he told me he could put me into an easy way of earning money if I liked, but it was risky. I said I did not care for that, and since then I have always been on that lay. For a bit I did very well; I used to dress up as a tidy servant, and go shopping, and many a week I would get rid of three or four pounds' worth of the stuff; but in course, as I grew older and lost my figure and the drink told on me, it got more difficult. People looked at the money more sharply, and I got three months for it twice. I was allus careful, and never took more than one piece out with me at a time, so that I got off several times till they began to know me. You remember the last time I was in – I told you about it, and since then you have been doing it.'
'But what will you do when I am gone?'
'Well, you know, Sally, I gets a bit from men who comes round of an evening and gives me things to hide away under that board. They knows as they can trust me, and I have had five thousand pounds worth of diamonds and things hidden away there for weeks. No one would ever think of searching there for it. I ain't known to be mixed up with thieves, and this court ain't the sort of place that
