“Aren’t you Molly Lasher?” RoBards asked.
“I was.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I’m on the cross.” He knew that she was “pattering the flash” for being in thievery; but he answered solemnly:
“Your mother is on the Cross, too, Molly.”
“Poor old thing! I’m sorry for her, but it don’t do her no good for me to hang there with her.”
He entreated her to go home, and promised that the judge would free her at his request, but Molly was honest enough to say:
“It wouldn’t work, Mister RoBards. I ain’t built for that life. I’ve outgrowed it.”
He spoke to the judge, who sent her to the Magdalen Home instead of to Sing Sing.
But the odor of sanctity was as stifling to Molly’s quivering nostrils as the smell of new-mown hay, and she broke loose from pious restraint and returned to her chosen career. She joined destinies with a young crossman. As she would have put it in her new language, she became the file of a gonof who was caught by a nab while frisking a fat of his fawney, his dummy, and his gold thimble. Molly went on a bender when her chuck was jugged, and a star took her back to the Magdalen Home.