“I’d rather have pink, a great deal. I think black’d be hideous.”
“Depends on one’s skin, I suppose,” said the sallow Irene thoughtfully. “Who wants to give you a silk nightie, young Elsie?”
Elsie deliberated. She was not usually communicative about her own affairs, but the notice of her employer had gratified her vanity, and she very much desired to boast of it to someone. Irene, at least, would be safe, and she sometimes offered shrewd pieces of advice that were not the outcome of experience, of which, by comparison with Elsie herself, she had little, but of a natural acumen.
Elsie, when the gas had been turned out, and the two girls were lying in Irene’s bed, after extracting giggling oaths of secrecy, recounted to Irene the whole story of her adventure with Mr. Williams. She represented herself as still entirely undecided as to the sincerity of his assurance that their relationship was to be purely friendly.
“Rats!” was Irene’s unvarnished comment. “It isn’t very likely the old fool would have told you to get silk nighties and things unless he meant to see them himself. But I wouldn’t do it, Elsie. It’s too risky.”
“Why, who’s to find out? It isn’t as if his wife was alive,” said Elsie, with a recollection of the household in Mortimer Crescent.
“I don’t mean that at all. But it’s a beastly risk for you. He’s your boss, after all. Suppose he gives you the sack, once this week-end business is over? Men are like that—they get sick of a girl directly they’ve had their fun, and then they don’t want to be for ever reminded of it.”
“It’s quite as likely he’d be for ever pestering me to go with him again,” Elsie declared, not at all desirous of supposing that her attractions could be provocative of such speedy satiety. “And even if he did sack me, there are plenty of other jobs going.”
“You young fool! Don’t you see what I mean? Suppose he landed you with a baby?”
“Oh!” Elsie was startled.