‘Then, that’s settled,’ said Marston. ‘Directly the keys are ready we can arrange everything.’
‘By-the-bye,’ said Marston, as he was turning to go, ‘what about that girl? Where’s her mother? I suppose she’s Gertie’s child, isn’t she?’
‘Gertie’s dead!’ said the old man, quietly.
‘Gertie dead? I didn’t know that.’
‘She died directly after the Egerton affair—died here. Ah, I never could make it out,’ added Heckett, smoking his pipe fiercely.
‘But she wasn’t married, was she? We never knew that she was.’
‘I can’t tell you, Marston. I often thinks it over and wonders what the real truth of the affair was. Perhaps you might help me. You’re a scholard and pretty cute. You’ve read them ere stories in the ‘lustrated papers as gals read, ain’t you?’
‘I have read some of them years ago,’ answered Marston. ‘Well, the story of that child as you see here just now’s one on ‘em ready wrote. She’s my Gertie’s young un right enough, for she were born here. You knew my Gertie? She was as handsome a wench as you could see in a day’s march, and a reg’lar lady in her ways, warn’t she?’
‘She was,’ said Marston; ‘it was always a mystery how she could be your daughter.’
‘She took arter her mother,’ answered Heckett; ‘and Gertie, the child as you see, takes arter her. Well, you know as when I had the betting office in Soho, and young swells used to come, and we rigged up a roulette table in the back room? You remember them days?’