“Yes, but that can’t be,” I said. “And the vice of London isn’t concentrated in just this single spot.” The restaurant we were in—a large but cheap affair—was quite a center, she said. “There must be other places. All the women who do this sort of thing don’t come here. Where do they go?”
“There’s another place along Cheapside.”
It appeared that there were certain places where the girls congregated in this district—saloons or quasi-restaurants, where they could go and wait for men to speak to them. They could wait twenty minutes at a time and then if no one spoke to them they had to get up and leave, but after twenty minutes or so they could come back again and try their luck, which meant that they would have to buy another drink. Meantime there were other places and they were always full of girls.
“You shall take me to that Cheapside place,” I suggested. “I will buy you more cigarettes and a box of candy afterwards. I will pay you for your time.”
She thought about her traveling companion whom she had agreed to meet at eleven, and finally promised. The companion was to be left to her fate.
While we dined we talked of men and the types they admired. Englishmen, she thought, were usually attracted toward French girls and Americans liked English girls, but the great trick was to get yourself up like an American girl and speak her patois—imitate her slang, because she was the most popular of all.
“Americans and English gentlemen”—she herself made that odd distinction—“like the American girl. I’m sometimes taken for one,” she informed me, “and this hat is like the American hats.”
It was. I smiled at the compliment, sordid as it may appear.
“Why do they like them?” I asked.
“Oh, the American girl is smarter. She walks quicker. She carries herself better. That’s what the men tell me.”