“Elsie’s not been a good gurl lately, and she knows it very well. Her own mother doesn’t seem to have any influence with her, so perhaps ...” said Mrs. Palmer to her sisters, but looking at her child, “perhaps you’ll see what you can do. It’s not a thing I like to talk about, ever, but we know very well what happens to a gurl who spends her time larking about the streets with fellows. To think that a child of mine——”
“What do you do it for, Elsie?” enquired Aunt Gertie, in a practical tone, as though only such shrewdness as hers could have seized at once upon this vital point.
“Do what?”
“What your poor mother says.”
“She hasn’t said anything, yet.”
“Don’t prevaricate with me, you bad gurl, you,” said Mrs. Palmer sharply. “You know very well what I mean, and so do others. The tales that get carried to me about your goings-on! First one fellow, and then another, and even running after a whipper-snapper that’s already going with another gurl!”
“This is a bit of Ireen’s work, I suppose,” said Elsie. “I can’t help it if her boy’s sick of her already, can I? I’m sure I don’t care anything about Arthur Osborne, or any of them, for that matter.”
The implication that Elsie Palmer, at sixteen and a half, could afford to distinguish between her admirers, obscurely infuriated the spinster Aunt Ada.
She began to tremble with wrath, and white dents appeared at the corners of her mouth and nostrils. “You’re not the first gurl whose talked that way, and ended by disgracing herself and her family,” she cried shrilly. “If I were your mother, I’d give you a sound whipping, I declare to goodness I would.”
Elsie shot a vicious look at her aunt out of the corners of her slanting eyes. “Are the grapes sour, Aunt Ada?” she asked insolently.