Bobby looked surprised.
"Mr. Spink," Bess explained darkly. "He got him there."
Apart from Bess's recommendation, Mr. Chislehurst's contact with Ruth was soon established through little Alice, who attended Sunday School. Ruth, moreover, called herself a church-woman, and was sedately proud of it, though the Church had no apparent influence upon her life, and though she never attended services.
On the latter point, the Cherub, when he had rooted himself firmly in her regard, remonstrated.
"See, I ca-a-n't, sir," said Ruth simply.
"Why not?" asked Bobby.
"He's always there," Ruth answered enigmatically.
Bobby was puzzled and she saw it.
"Alf," she explained. "See, he wanted me same as Ernie. Only not to marry me. Just for his fun like and then throw you over. That's Alf, that is. There's the difference atween the two brothers." She regarded the young man before her with the lovely solicitude of the mother initiating a sensitive son into the cruelties of a world of which she has already had tragic experience. "Men are like that, sir—some men." She added with tender delicacy, "Only you wouldn't know it, not yet."
The Cherub might be innocent, but no man has lived and worked in the back-streets of Bermondsey without learning some strange and ugly truths about life and human nature.