"Madge, the little dear, didn't know enough to ask a policeman. She wouldn't have known what to do if it wasn't for Uncle Dave. He just bundled her into a cab and gave an order and then he told her that he was taking her to a nice place at his hotel which he had fixed up for her. And he took her to a place on Wabash avenue and he ordered something that was brought up by a nigger. And he told her to drink it—she who didn't know whisky or dope from lemon pop.
"And then the old bugger sits right down and says they must write a letter to Madge's aunts and tell them how nice she is fixed and how they mustn't worry about her being 'lost in the great city,' or words to that effect. And Uncle Dave puts in something about getting her a nice position which will keep her very busy and they mustn't worry if she doesn't write every day.
"He goes out to mail the letter, and Madge lies down, because her head gets dizzy. And when she wakes up it's dark and she feels so funny. Then the little dear remembers that she's got to be brave and mustn't get lonely or homesick, even if the beautiful big room she's got doesn't seem so snug and cozy as her little dormer bedroom under the roof in the cottage at home.
"So she lets down her beautiful golden hair and starts to sing. And me, what's been an old sport and no good to nobody, myself included most of all, is in that same hotel. I'm not making any excuses for my presence. But when I hears that golden voice floating through the corridors of that den of iniquity I just ups and chokes plumb up, and not thinkin' of the proprieties or anything else, I just beats it to that door and looks for the owner of the voice.
"And when I sees that beautiful baby girl, her red hair hanging to the floor, her big eyes lookin' at me so innocent-like, I ups and puts it to her straight.
"'F'r God's sake,' says I, 'child, what are you doing here?'
"'Minding my own business,' she should have said. But she ain't got that kind of a heart in her. Instead she ups and tells me in the most innocent way about Uncle Dave and Springfield and the two maiden aunts what weren't aunts at all, but just foster mothers to one child. And she tells me how Uncle Dave has brought her to this lovely place to live and is going to get her a job.
"'Job, hell,' I busts out, and she blushes and looks scared. Don't you know this is the —— hotel, the most terrible assignation house in this big, rotten old burg, where other girls like you, Margaret Burkle, for instance, were taken by designing old villains, kidnapped, enslaved and robbed of their virtue and their innocence?'
"At that she looks bewildered, as if she don't understand, and I didn't have the nerve to draw a map for her, knowin' as I did that I might have a mess of lively young hysteria on my hands. But I just puts my hand on her head and tells her to 'Never mind,' and then I slips out and shuts the door.