“Oh, I don’t. You don’t look to me like the daughter of a man who owned three grocery stores. That would mean he was well-to-do. You don’t expect me to believe that, with you leading this life in London?”
She bristled vaguely but without force.
“Believe it or not,” she said sullenly. “It’s so.”
“Tell me,” I said, “how much can you make out of this business?”
“Oh, sometimes more, sometimes less. I don’t walk every day. You know I only walk when I have to. If I pick up a gentleman and if he gives me a good lot I don’t walk very soon again—not until that’s gone. I—I don’t like to very much.”
“What do you call a good lot?”
“Oh, all sorts of sums. I have been given as high as six pounds.”
“That isn’t true,” I said. “You know it isn’t true. You’re talking for effect.”
The girl’s face flushed.
“It is true. As I’m alive it’s true. It wasn’t in this very room, but it was in this house. He was a rich American. He was from New York. All Americans have money. And he was drunk.”