"No," said Mary, "I think I'll wait; but I wish I knew the curves."
"Oh, hell; it's dead easy, I tell you." The child gulped her whiskey and went on: "You just put on your glad rags at eight o'clock an' walk Broadway from Twenty-third to Forty-second. If you can hustle, you can land half a dozen before one o'clock. When they give you the glad eye, take it, an' when they don't, just you walk by 'em sort of hummin' under your breath. Stop an' look in the store-windows, an' they'll come like flies. But always be sure to get your money first. Ask 'em two dollars if they look that strong, or one if they're cheap guys—but don't ever take a cent less'n fifty cents. I always gets the two-plunk myself, unless a piker stands out for a dark corner or hallway and tries the quarter game: then I go through his clothes for all he's got."
Mary rose, with averted eyes.
"Thank you," she said.
"Oh, that's all right," said the child. "You just take my tip, an' you'll make good."
And, if by managing, by the most detestible sort of work, to keep clothes upon her back, food in her stomach and a roof over her head, was making good, Mary did it. Everything fell out as the little girl had described. That night the adventurer, with no alternative, sank the last of her scruples, and, when her room-rent next fell due, she paid it and had a margin of several dollars to place in her stocking.
There was not, she found, very much to be saved, for the whole world seemed to mark her as legitimate prey.
First, the policemen were quick to see that she was an unprotected newcomer, and, one by one, to stop her and threaten her with arrest. In the beginning, she was afraid to slip them their tithes, and did it timidly and awkwardly; but, when she saw how jauntily and graciously they accepted payment, she had the bills always ready at the time when they were expected and, with the bills, the caresses that, not infrequently, had to accompany them.
Other expenses were proportionate. Rent gained upon the advance of prosperity. Showy clothes, if not the best, were a necessity, and the second-hand shops raised their prices on the suspicion of her profession. Rainy nights came, when there was almost no business to be done. The work was of a character that required sturdy food, and this must be bought in restaurants tacitly conducted for her class and charging accordingly. The men, she soon discovered, were as loath to buy her a supper as they were ready to buy her drinks, a condition the sole consolation of which was the fact that alcohol dulled whatever remained of the fine edge of sensibility.
Some of her cursory Antonies, regarding their transactions as they regarded their other business affairs, were honest, but most were honest only when they had to be, and to them Mary and her kind were beasts of burden not worthy of the stipulated hire. There were the lechers that wanted only to waste the busy minutes in unremunerative talk; there were the seekers that endeavored to secure through hideous formulæ of affection what they were too mean frankly to purchase; there were the hypocritical male animals that, above suspicion in their daylight life, considered the women of the night as fair game for cheating, and then there were the careful toads, who prided themselves upon their shrewdness, and who bargained and haggled as a man would be ashamed to bargain and haggle for a dog.