"You can just shut up, Jenny Pearl, because you know very well my mother wouldn't allow me to do anything. You know that."
Jenny fumed with indignation.
"Your mother? Why, when she's got half a bottle of gin to cry with over her darling Ireen or darling Winnie, she's very glad to pawn what her darlings get given to them."
"You've got very good," said Irene, bitterly sarcastic, "since this night out."
"Which you meant for me to spend out from the moment you introduced me to him."
"What do you take me for?" inquired Irene rashly.
"I take you for what you are—a rotter. God! and think what you will be one day—I know—a dirty old woman in a basement with a red petticoat and a halfpenny dip and a quartern of gin."
Irene's imagination was not extensive enough to cap this prophecy, so she poked the fire instead of making the attempt.
"Nobody wants you to stay here," she muttered.
"Don't you worry yourself. I'm going upstairs to pack my things up now."