The girl only crouched lower.
“I can't!” she cried again. She was panting as if in exhaustion.
“Why can't you?” Mary insisted. She had no sympathy now for the girl's distress, merely a great suspicious curiosity.
“Because—because——” The girl could not go on.
Mary's usual shrewdness came to her aid, and she put her next question in a different direction.
“What were you sent up for?” she asked briskly. “Tell me.”
It was Garson who broke the silence that followed.
“Come on, now!” he ordered. There was a savage note in his voice under which the girl visibly winced. Mary made a gesture toward him that he should not interfere. Nevertheless, the man's command had in it a threat which the girl could not resist and she answered, though with a reluctance that made the words seem dragged from her by some outside force—as indeed they were.
“For stealing.”
“Stealing what?” Mary said.