"I said I 'd come," he replied gravely.
"Yes, I know. All the same, I thought—you know, when a person 's in hard luck, nothing goes right, an' a girl, when she 's in a mess, is anybody's fool. Is n't that right?"
She knew her peril then; she lived open-eyed in face of it.
"You shall not be anybody's fool," he answered. "If anybody tries to be bad to you, I 'll kill him."
He was still standing just within the closed door, no nearer to her than the size of the little chamber compelled.
"Won't you sit down?" she invited.
"Eh?" His contemplation of her seemed to absorb him and make him absent-minded. "No," he replied, when she repeated her invitation.
"As you like," she conceded, wondering whether after all he was going to be amenable to the treatment she proposed for him. It crossed her mind that he was thinking of getting something for his money and her silly mouth tightened. If her sex was one of her assets, her virtue—the fanatic virtue which is a matter of prejudice rather than of principle,—was one of her liabilities. She had nothing to sell him.
"You know," she said, "the worst of it is, none of us have n't had any salary for weeks. That's what puts us in the cart. We 're all broke. If Padden had let us have a bit, we would n't be stranded like this. And the queer thing is, Gus Padden 's the last man you 'd have picked for a wrong 'un. Fat, you know, and beaming; a sort of fatherly way, he had. He used to remind me of Santa Claus. An' now he 's thrown us down this way, and how I 'm going to get up again I can't say." She gave him one of her shrewd upward glances; "tell me," she added.
"I can tell you," he replied.