"Yes." My answer was short and sharp. I had heard the kind of question put in that oily voice too many times to pay any further heed to it. I stepped out into the street to take the car.
"If you 're going up that way I might as well go 'long too. I like comp'ny," said the woman, keeping abreast of me and nudging me with an elbow.
The car was nearly full, and the crowd waiting for it made a running assault upon the few vacancies. Just before it stopped I saw some one leave the seat behind the motor-man; I made a rush to secure the place. As I sat down the woman mounted the step.
"You don't get rid of me so easy, duckie," she said with a leer.
I turned squarely to her, looking beneath the wide brim of the tawdry bedraggled hat to find her eyes; her gin-laden breath was hot on my cheek.
"You go your way and I 'll go mine," I said in a low hard voice.
With a curse the woman swung off the step just as the two signal bells rang.
I took off my hat. The night was cooling rapidly after the tempest. The motion of the car created a movement of air against my face. It was grateful to me. I drew a long breath of relief; these evening rides in the open cars were one of my few recreations.
As the car sped along the broad thoroughfare, now so long familiar to me, so wonderful and alluring to my country eyes in those early years, so drearily artificial and depressing in the later ones, I found myself dwelling again on that first experience in this city; I recalled the first time I was accosted by a woman pander. It was when I was reading the wants that morning of my arrival. I looked up to find her taking a seat beside me—a woman who tried by every dives' art of which she was possessed to entice me to go with her on leaving the station. Oh, she was awful, that woman! I never knew there were such till then.
The searchlight of memory struck full upon my thought at that time: And they said my mother was like this!