"They don't mean to do no harm; they're just naterally troublesome. Seems as if they was born that way, and couldn't 'elp theirselves. There's a lot of 'em as is never satisfied till they've got a man like a jumpin'-jack, what all they need to do is to pull the string to make him jig. This girl is one o' them kind."
Tom continued to hold his peace.
"I've saw her. Pretty little thing she is all right. But give her two or three years. Lord love you, Kid, she'll be as washed out then as one of her own ribbons after a hard rain. And yet them is the kind that most young fellers'll run after, like a pup'll run after a squirrel."
Tom was startled. The figure of speech had been used to him before. He could hear it drawled in a tired voice, soft and velvety. It was queer what conclusions about women these grown men came to! Quidmore had thought them as dangerous as Honey, and warned him against them much as Honey was doing now. Mrs. Quidmore had once been what Maisie was at that minute, and yet as he, Tom, remembered her.... But Honey was going on again, spluttering his words as he brushed his teeth.
"It can be awful easy to git mixed up with a girl, and awful hard to git unmixed. She'll put a man in a hole where he can't help doin' somethink foolish, and then make out as what she've got a claim on him. There's a lot o' talk about women bein' the prey o' men; but for one woman as I've ever saw that way I've saw a hundred men as was the prey o' women. Now when a girl of eighteen gits a young boy like you to spend the money as he's saved for his eddication...."
The boy sprang up in bed, hammering the bedclothes. "Don't you say anything against her. I won't listen to it."
With that supple tread which always made Tom think of one who could easily slip through windows, Honey walked to the closet where he kept his night-shirt. "'Tain't nothink agin her, Kid. Was on'y goin' to say that a girl what'll git a young boy to do that shows what she is. And yer did spend the money a-takin' her about, now didn't yer?"
Tom fell back upon his pillow. Putting out the gas, Honey threw himself on his creaking cot.
"You're a free boy, Kiddy," he went on, while arranging the sheet and blanket as he liked them. "If yer wants to beat it to-morrer, beat it away. Don't stop because yer'll be afraid I'll miss yer. Wasn't never no hand for missin' no one, and don't mean to begin. What I'd 'a liked have been to fill yer up with eddication so that yer could jaw to beat the best of 'em, if yer turned out to be the Whitelaw baby."