“They pull that off on ev’ry girl,” Harry said. “’F she is one, then she’ll own up cause she thinks they know all about it—that’s the game.”
“How’d you happen to get in with a crowd like that?” Blanche asked.
“I didn’t know what they was,” Mabel replied, aggrievedly. “Gee whiz, you can’t follow a fella around an’ see what he’s doin’, can you? This Bob Sullivan, now, he told me he was a book-maker at the races, an ev’rybody I knew seemed to think he was. Then he had a friend, Jack Misner, said he was a jockey—a little runt of a guy. Bob swore all the time he was gone on me. He’s a nice fella at that, he is, an’ I’m darn sorry they got him.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be,” her mother said. “When any one’s dishonest they oughta get punished for it, they ought. This world would be a fine world, it would, ’f ev’rybody went round and robbed ev’rybody else. An’ what’s more, I do hope you’ll stay home more now, Mabel dear, an’ keep outa trouble, I do.”
“Aw, pipe down, Kate,” her husband broke in. “She’s gotta size up her men better fr’m now on, sure, but you can’t expect her to sit around here all night. She c’n have all the fun she wants, I don’t mind, long as she looks them over more careful an’ don’t swallow all their gab.”
“It’s jes’ no use f’r me to say anythin’,” Mrs. Palmer answered, dolefully. “None uh you ever pays any attention to Kate Palmer till it’s too late, and then it’s ma do this f’r me, an’ ma do that.”
“I’ll watch out more, ma, I will,” Mabel said. “When I meet a fella with a big wad I’m gonna find out how he makes it ’fore I let him take me out. A girl’s gotta protect herself, that’s a fact.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to go out with a few men that work for a living—just for a change,” Philip said. “Maybe they won’t take you to swell joints, maybe not, but they’ll get you into less trouble all right.”
“Don’t wish any uh Blanche’s kind on me,” Mabel retorted. “When I want to go to a sixty-cent movie-house, ’r sit down on a bench in the park, I’ll have my head tested to see ’f I’m all there.”
Her little, straight nose turned up, and her loosely small lips drew together to a tight complacency. Her plump face was more drawn, and hollows were under her eyes, and a trace of fright still lingered in the black eyes, but the expression on her face was one of rebuked but still ruling impudence. She told herself that she had been stung once by men—an incredible incident—and would henceforth set out to revenge herself upon them. It was all just a fight to see which side would get the best of the other, and she wouldn’t be caught napping twice. Her goal was to marry a man with money and good looks, and she wouldn’t allow anything to deter her. Beneath these determinations, sentimentalities and fears, aroused by the shock of her arrest, told her that she was flirting too closely with danger, and that it might be better to look for a stalwart youth with a laughable “line” and a movie-hero face—she was tired, after all, of letting homely, slow-tongued fellows kiss and hug her because they spent money to give her the gay nights that were due to every girl, and then again, she really ought to consider her poor ma, who was always fretting about her. Aw, well, she would slow down just a little and stay home once in a while, and select her escorts with more of an eye to their safety and their physical attraction, and with money alone no longer all-supreme, but she would never subside to a back-number—not she. Plenty of girls ended by catching rich young men with a dash to them, and she could do the same thing if she kept a level head.