"She went with him?"
"Parsed out of sight completely, my dear. Mother nearly crazy. Went to the police. Police added the girlie's name to their three columns of other missing girls for that year, and said they couldn't guess where she was. An uncle tried to go on an inspection-tour of his own, and had spent about all the family cash when he got to a flat on West Fortieth Street and had its girls in for the usual drinks. He saw his niece, but the bouncer knocked him down, and when he woke up in the arey, the happy family had moved."
"And that was all?"
"That was all till, some two years later, the girl sent for her mother to come to Bellevue to see her die. As soon as she was used up, they'd turned her out without one of the pennies she had earned for them.—Narsty, eh?"
There was a brief pause.
"I guess," said Violet, "there ain't much chance for you unless you're good."
"My dear," answered the Englishwoman, "if you're good, you haven't a chance at all. It's just a question of whether you have or haven't enough to live on. The best guardian of a man's virtue is the worst enemy of a woman's—and that's an empty pocketbook, my dear."
But Violet was in no mind for generalizations.
"It's a business, then, ain't it?" she asked.
"A regular business," nodded Evelyn,—"fifty cents up—and now that they've smashed the lotteries, policy, and the races, it's more of a business than ever. There are hundreds of young chaps all over the country who make their living by selling girls to places like this—and worse than this; and there are more who make better livings by making one, or two, or even three girls walk the street for them. Just now, in New York, the street's the main thing."