“How about the fella?” he asked casually.
“Ditched me,” replied the girl. “After I come out the horspittle I never seen hide nor hair of him. Gee,” she concluded bitterly, “I was crazy about that lad.”
“Must ’a’ been a kind of a mean skunk, though,” judged Tough. “How about the kid?”
The girl’s eyes sought the glittering river. “I give it away,” she told him finally.
“Oh!” ejaculated Tough.
The girl seemed to feel a tentative rebuke in this. “What could I do?” she asked. “I tried to get another job before—and I couldn’t. I don’t know’s I’ll try again. There’s easier ways”—the sentence hung suspended for a moment—“you know.”
There was no polite veil of assumed ignorance thrown over such situations in the circle in which Tough moved. He knew, of course. Still——
“There’s better ways,” he ventured.
Tough was startled at the flash of anger that lit up the girl’s shrunken face. For a moment she looked as if she would strike him. Then, with a sharp, quick movement, she buried her face in the covering of the bundle which she had been holding lightly on the railing of the bridge. The next instant Tough heard a soft splash as something struck the water.
“There’s that way,” a voice shrieked in his ear.