She nodded.
“I am on the stage,” she said,—“only a chorus girl at the Universal, worse luck. Still, they don’t allow us to stay away, and I can’t afford to lose my place.”
“Do you mean to say that you have been keeping yourself here, then?” Laverick asked bluntly.
“Of course,” she answered. “I do not like to be a burden on any one, and after all, you see, Arthur and I are really not related at all. He has always told me, too, that times have been so bad lately.”
Laverick was on the point of telling her that bad though they had been Arthur Morrison had never drawn less than fifteen hundred a year, but he checked himself. It was not his business to interfere.
“I think,” he said, “that your brother ought to have provided for you. He could have done so with very little effort.”
“But what am I to do now?” she asked him. “If I am absent, I shall lose my place.”
Laverick thought for a moment.
“If you went round there and told them,” he suggested, “would that make any difference? I could stay until you came back.”
“Do you mind?” she asked eagerly. “It would be so kind of you.”