DOCTOR. No, no. Begin after you lost your place.
GIRL. All right, if you think he’ll think it funny.
DOCTOR. Never mind that. Say what you’re doing now.
GIRL. Why, I come here every day.
DOCTOR. But before you come here?
GIRL. Oh, I do my five hours on the streets.
DOCTOR. Well, how’s that? The gentleman’s from the country, I tell you. He wants to know. Go on.
GIRL. There now, I wouldn’t have thought there was anyone didn’t know that. Why, I rig myself out as a work-girl, with a little bag on my arm—they make togs special for that, y’ know—and then I trot along by the shop windows. Pretty hard work, too, ‘cause to do it real well you have to walk fast. Then I stops in front of some shop or other. Nine times out of ten that does the trick. It just makes me laugh, I tell you, but you’d think all the men had learnt what to say out of a book. There’s only two things they say, that’s all. It’s either: ‘You walk very fast’ or else: ‘Aren’t you afraid, all alone?’ One knows what that means, eh? Or else I do the ‘young widow’ fake. You’ve got to go a bit fast like that, too. I don’t know why, but it makes ’em catch on. They find out precious soon I’m not a young widow, but that doesn’t make any odds. [Seriously] There’re things like that I don’t understand.
DOCTOR. What sort are they, then? Shopwalkers, commercial travellers?
GIRL. I like that! Why, I only take real gentlemen.