“Oh, yes, there’s no make-believe this time,” answered the girl. “A bad thing for her if he wasn’t.”
“Oh, it’s only what’s known all over the neighbourhood,” continued the girl. “She’s had a pretty rough time with him. Twice I’ve found her getting ready to go to sleep for the night by sitting on the bare floor with her back against the wall. Had sold every stick in the place and gone off. But she’d always some excuse for him. It was sure to be half her fault and the other half he couldn’t help. Now she’s got her ‘reward’ according to her own account. Heard he was dying in a doss-house, and must fetch him home and nurse him back to life. Seems he’s getting fonder of her every day. Now that he can’t do anything else.”
“It doesn’t seem to depress her spirits,” mused Joan.
“Oh, she! She’s all right,” agreed the girl. “Having the time of her life: someone to look after for twenty-four hours a day that can’t help themselves.”
She examined Joan awhile in silence. “Are you on the stage?” she asked.
“No,” answered Joan. “But my mother was. Are you?”
“Thought you looked a bit like it,” said the girl. “I’m in the chorus. It’s better than being in service or in a shop: that’s all you can say for it.”
“But you’ll get out of that,” suggested Joan. “You’ve got the actress face.”
The girl flushed with pleasure. It was a striking face, with intelligent eyes and a mobile, sensitive mouth. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I could act all right. I feel it. But you don’t get out of the chorus. Except at a price.”
Joan looked at her. “I thought that sort of thing was dying out,” she said.