Pidge looked into the crib. A core of fetid vapor hung above it, and Fanny’s words seemed to blend with it.
“Think you can hold your job and hold a man, too, don’t you? Oh, yes, Redhead knows how. Redhead’s got it all worked out. Redhead can tell us all how to do it, oh, yes——”
“What’s the matter, Fanny? Are you scolding, so I won’t start? I didn’t come to start something. Just came to see you. Wouldn’t you like to go out for an hour and have me stay with the—with the——”
Pidge always halted this way.
“Worried—eh? Worried about somethin’?” Fanny piped up. “Well, I’m not tellin’ anything—except you ain’t got your little mastiff tied to no corset string——”
“What are you talking about, Fanny?”
“Like to know. Wouldn’t you?”
Pidge felt cold. She cared to know what the other meant. She didn’t say so, however. She knew a better way—an effective way that seemed to come out of depths within her that knew vast pasts and many lands, all strategies of men and maids, all secrets of tent and purdah, lattice and veil.
“Don’t trouble, Fanny. I just came in to see how you were getting on. I’m so sorry, you know——”
“Sorry——” Fanny laughed.