“Well, then,” she questioned, “how would you like to work with us?”
The girl looked up for a second with another of her fleeting, stealthy glances.
“You—you mean that——?”
Mary explained her intention in the matter very explicitly. Her voice grew boastful.
“Our kind of work pays well when you know how. Look at us.”
Aggie welcomed the opportunity for speech, too long delayed.
“Hats from Joseph's, gowns from Lucile's, and cracked ice from Tiffany's. But it ain't ladylike to wear it,” she concluded with a reproachful glance at her mentor.
Mary disregarded the frivolous interruption, and went on speaking to the girl, and now there was something pleasantly cajoling in her manner.
“Suppose I should stake you for the present, and put you in with a good crowd. All you would have to do would be to answer advertisements for servant girls. I will see that you have the best of references. Then, when you get in with the right people, you will open the front door some night and let in the gang. Of course, you will make a get-away when they do, and get your bit as well.”
There flashed still another of the swift, sly glances, and the lips of the girl parted as if she would speak. But she did not; only, her head sagged even lower on her breast, and the shrunken form grew yet more shrunken. Mary, watching closely, saw these signs, and in the same instant a change came over her. Where before there had been an underlying suggestion of hardness, there was now a womanly warmth of genuine sympathy.