“Now, look here, Polly,” said Sim Crittenden—“I’m a rough man.... I know you are a lady and ought to marry a curate, and I’m no account, and all that. But I think I can get it to you if you’ll be patient.... I’m on the music-halls, I’m makin’ eighty gold pieces every week. It’s no good being modest about it, and I’m not—that’s God’s truth put into the naked vernacular. It may sound vulgar, but it’s so.... Now, ye know, I don’t know what to do with it—that’s the fact. I could buy fancy rabbits or a talkin’ canary and all that—or I could chuck it about on the turf at race-meetin’s—but unfortunately God did not make me in the image of a jackass, and I’m not going against the works of God. I’m modest.... I could start a girl and a brougham, but I’m tired of prize-fighting.... Now, what I say is this: if I had your dainty little person a-sittin’ at the end of my table every day, it might make me look less of a blamey athlete and more of a man of fashion, see! Eh?”
The girl hesitated.
Mr. Sim Crittenden touched her arm anxiously:
“Besides, Whiffles isn’t much of a name; no woman could be called Whiffles and remain virtuous.”
The girl smiled sadly:
“No, Sim—you don’t understand. I’ve sat as a model.”
“I’m not to be blamed for falling in love with a good figure, am I?” said Mr. Sim Crittenden laconically.
She smiled away a tear:
“There’s the boy,” she said—“my Ponsonby has no father.”
Mr. Sim Crittenden pushed his hat back on his head: