My face must have expressed the utter abhorrence I felt of such work. O let us cleanse our whited sepulchres! Is there not work enough within our own borders to employ our Christian men and reforming women! We need not go abroad for work with such festering sores in our own vitals. For very shame let us cleanse these places!—were my thoughts.
Here was another occasion for glib Annie O'Brien to hold forth; and such occasions were never slighted by her.
"Half that come in here," she said, "are not doing anything when they come. My coming, when I came, was a put up job."
"What do you mean by that?"
"A policeman was hired to take me up. I was sitting in a store, about nine o'clock in the evening, when he came in and told me to follow him."
"Who put him up to it?"
"A man that kept a saloon paid him five dollars, and he did it. Any of the policemen will take a person up for five dollars. When I came here I wasn't doing anything out of the way; but, of course, they knew what I had done."
"What did the saloon man want you taken up for?"
"Because I wouldn't tend for him. He had tried to get me in there, and I wouldn't go."
"Why wouldn't you go? Wouldn't it have been better for you to earn an honest living?"