"Grand," he said; "the auld woman's grand—you ought to see her in the new silk dress I bought 'er the day—all grane wid fancy trimmin's from Six' Avenoo. An' the kiddies is thrivin'. Cecilia'll soon be havin' to go to work an' help the family funds, she's that sthrong and hearty, an' young Van Wyck is such a divil that the teacher throwed him out of school. He's licked all the b'ys in his class, an' I think he'll end as a champeen pug."
He went out, still smiling, and, as he did so, Violet saw Rose, after stooping hurriedly, place in his hands a yellow bill. As the door closed, there came into the younger woman's eyes the question that she would not have dared to ask.
"Yep," nodded Rose, "that's my week's pay for what they call protection."
"Isn't he afraid to take it?" Violet, thus encouraged, inquired.
"The man above him isn't afraid to take two-thirds of it," said Rose, "an' the best of it goes past him to the district boss—it's the regular system with the regular prices. Oh, no, he ain't afraid; an' if you ever tried to live on a copper's pay, you'd soon be afraid not to take it."
Violet, returning to the parlor, bit her lip: there was indeed small help to be had from the law.
Small help, either there or elsewhere. She turned, naturally, only to the seemingly more prosperous customers, but, even by them, she was met with smiling incredulity: her story was so hackneyed that it could not be true.
"It's all right enough to want to get out of here," said her sagest adviser, who at least paid her the rare compliment of credence; "but how are you going to live after you get out? You can't go home; you haven't got any trade; you can't cook; without a recommendation you can't get even a job at general housework or in a factory."
He was a quiet, middle-aged widower that said this, an infrequent visitor, a chief clerk in one of the departments of a large insurance company, with a reputation for liberal kindliness at Rose's and, in his own little world, a position of some influence.
"You get me out," said Violet, "an' I'll do the rest."