“The horrible things people do.”
“You’ll be kept busy if you worry about that.”
“It’s about myself.”
“Want to confess? Go on.”
“I mean, George and I used to talk—you know. Well, it got beyond talk. Uncle Alfred gave me ten shillings once. I spent it—that way.”
“Well, well.”
“You can’t dismiss it like that. I shouldn’t be remembering it if it were so easy as that. I met her—you know—in Derby Street——”
“You’re not going to tell me the whole story?”
“I must tell someone. I met her and she took me down a lot of streets. She walked along briskly in a business-like way, and I slunk along behind with my coat collar turned up and my cap over my eyes, and I kept shivering, though it wasn’t cold. We came to a little house and she knocked at the door, and a fat woman with red arms came to it. She just looked at us and said: ‘Full up.’ We went on to another little house, but I couldn’t get that out of my mind, and the room there was so horrible that I ran away, and that’s all.”
Mrs. Fourmy looked up at the clock, into the fire, round at the corner cupboard. At last she said: