第37章 THE THIEF(2)

"Sure, I will!" she declared.She went to the girl and helped her to stand up."We'll fix you out all right," she said, comfortingly."Come along with me....Hungry! Gee, but that's tough!"Half an hour afterward, while Mary was at her desk, giving part of her attention to Joe Garson, who sat near, and part to a rather formidable pile of neatly arranged papers, Aggie reported with her charge, who, though still shambling of gait, and stooping, showed by some faint color in her face and an increased steadiness of bearing that the food had already strengthened her much.

"She would come," Aggie explained."I thought she ought to rest for a while longer anyhow." She half-shoved the girl into a chair opposite the desk, in an absurd travesty on the maternal manner.

"I'm all right, I tell you," came the querulous protest.

Whereupon, Aggie gave over the uncongenial task of mothering, and settled herself comfortably in a chair, with her legs merely crossed as a compromise between ease and propriety.

"Are you quite sure?" Mary said to the girl.And then, as the other nodded in assent, she spoke with a compelling kindliness.

"Then you must tell us all about it--this trouble of yours, you know.What is your name?"Once again the girl had recourse to the swift, searching, furtive glance, but her voice was colorless as she replied, listlessly:

"Helen Morris."

Mary regarded the girl with an expression that was inscrutable when she spoke again.

"I don't have to ask if you have been in prison," she said gravely."Your face shows it.""I--I came out--three months ago," was the halting admission.

Mary watched the shrinking figure reflectively for a long minute before she spoke again.Then there was a deeper resonance in her voice.

"And you'd made up your mind to go straight?""Yes." The word was a whisper.

"You were going to do what the chaplain had told you," Mary went on in a voice vibrant with varied emotions."You were going to start all over again, weren't you? You were going to begin a new life, weren't you?" The bent head of the girl bent still lower in assent.There came a cynical note into Mary's utterance now.

"It doesn't work very well, does it?" she asked, bitterly.

The girl gave sullen agreement.

"No," she said dully; "I'm whipped."

Mary's manner changed on the instant.She spoke cheerfully for the first time.

"Well, then," she questioned, "how would you like to work with us?"The girl looked up for a second with another of her fleeting, stealthy glances.

"You--you mean that----?"

Mary explained her intention in the matter very explicitly.Her voice grew boastful.

"Our kind of work pays well when you know how.Look at us."Aggie welcomed the opportunity for speech, too long delayed.

"Hats from Joseph's, gowns from Lucile's, and cracked ice from Tiffany's.But it ain't ladylike to wear it," she concluded with a reproachful glance at her mentor.

Mary disregarded the frivolous interruption, and went on speaking to the girl, and now there was something pleasantly cajoling in her manner.

"Suppose I should stake you for the present, and put you in with a good crowd.All you would have to do would be to answer advertisements for servant girls.I will see that you have the best of references.Then, when you get in with the right people, you will open the front door some night and let in the gang.Of course, you will make a get-away when they do, and get your bit as well."There flashed still another of the swift, sly glances, and the lips of the girl parted as if she would speak.But she did not;only, her head sagged even lower on her breast, and the shrunken form grew yet more shrunken.Mary, watching closely, saw these signs, and in the same instant a change came over her.Where before there had been an underlying suggestion of hardness, there was now a womanly warmth of genuine sympathy.

"It doesn't suit you?" she said, very softly."Good! I was in hopes it wouldn't.So, here's another plan." Her voice had become very winning."Suppose you could go West--some place where you would have a fair chance, with money enough so you could live like a human being till you got a start?"There came a tensing of the relaxed form, and the head lifted a little so that the girl could look at her questioner.And, this time, the glance, though of the briefest, was less furtive.

"I will give you that chance," Mary said simply, "if you really want it."That speech was like a current of strength to the wretched girl.

She sat suddenly erect, and her words came eagerly.

"Oh, I do!" And now her hungry gaze remained fast on the face of the woman who offered her salvation.

Mary sprang up and moved a step toward the girl who continued to stare at her, fascinated.She was now all wholesome.The memory of her own wrongs surged in her during this moment only to make her more appreciative of the blessedness of seemly life.She was moved to a divine compassion over this waif for whom she might prove a beneficent providence.There was profound conviction in the emphasis with which she spoke her warning.

"Then I have just one thing to say to you first.If you are going to live straight, start straight, and then go through with it.Do you know what that means?""You mean, keep straight all the time?" The girl spoke with a force drawn from the other's strength.

"I mean more than that," Mary went on earnestly."I mean, forget that you were ever in prison.I don't know what you have done--Idon't think I care.But whatever it was, you have paid for it--a pretty big price, too." Into these last words there crept the pathos of one who knew.The sympathy of it stirred the listener to fearful memories.

"I have, I have!" The thin voice broke, wailing.