Already the threads were being woven in those webs of Time, whereof God alone knows the pattern and directs the loom. Neither of them knew.
The barmaid, a tall, fresh-faced young girl, came down the room and took the empty glasses from the table.
"I say, Mr. Lothian," she remarked, "it's no business of mine, and no offence meant, but you didn't ought to have hit him."
"I know," Gilbert answered, "but why do you say so?"
"He's got such nice curly hair!" she replied with a provocative look from her bright eyes, and whisked away to the shelter of her counter.
Lothian sighed. During the years he had lived in Norfolk he had seen many fresh-faced girls come and go. Only a few days before, he had read a statement made by Mrs. Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army that the number of immoral women in the West End of London who have been barmaids is one quarter of the whole. . . .
At that moment, this Miss Molly Palmer was the belle des coulisses of Wordingham. The local bloods quarrelled about her, the elder men gave her gloves on the sly, her pert repartees kept the lounge in a roar from ten to eleven.
Once, with a sneer and as one man of the world to another, Helzephron had shown Lothian a trade paper in which these girls are advertised for—
"Barmaid wanted, must be attractive."
"Young lady wanted for select wine-room in the West End, gentlemen only, must be well educated and of good appearance, age not over twenty-five."