Perhaps his abstention added to the awe of him in which he held Newgate, voluntary poverty having always been a mighty power in the world, and especially respected by free livers.
Then came a day when Meg found "Bill's girl" shrieking and stamping with a wild abandonment of grief that had something terribly inhuman in its utter absence of control.
Bill had been put in irons for a playful assault on a fellow-prisoner with a hot poker, and Sally had bitten the gatekeeper because he wouldn't let her in.
"She doesn't know what she's doing; she's quite mad with passion and trouble," said Meg pitifully. And she put her arms round "Bill's girl," and pulled her away, and took her home with her and gave her some tea and buns, and consoled her with startling success; for the access of grief being past, Sally's spirits swung to the other extreme, with the wonderful rapidity of her highly emotional class.
Meg had not been the preacher's companion for months without imbibing some knowledge of what she had to deal with. Her heart sank rather; but for his sake who never in his life turned from any possibility of helping any one, she did her best for the girl.
It happened after that—she could hardly have told how—that, week by week, she learned more of the women who haunted Newgate.
There was nothing in her room worth stealing, and she had little to give; but "Bill's girl" liked to come late in the evening and sit by watching Meg model, and listening while she sang, for Meg preferred singing to talking.
"Let me stay up here, for I don't want to keep company with any other while Bill's laid by," she said once. "I ain't as bad as some."
So she stayed—and she was not the only one.
The small room would be full sometimes. "But at least there are fewer of them in the streets," Meg said to herself.