Engrossed as I had been in Minnie, I had not noticed the coming of the mechanic and the girl whose case had drawn me there. I saw them now when I looked around. The sight of the girl was perplexing at first, for she sat with another woman at the end of a neighboring form, and they looked so much alike that I could not distinguish the one who was there on trial. Crossing the passage, I asked leave to sit beside them. They drew up at once to make room for me, and I saw then that, the girl next me was the prisoner. The other was a twin sister, as she frankly told me, and the resemblance fully sustained her. I explained that I had come to the station-house because I happened to see the affair of a few nights before, and was anxious to find what course it would take in court. The girl agreed with me that the mechanic was in no way to blame. “He never know’d that it was an officer that was draggin’ me down the steps, and out into the street. I never know’d it neither till I see his star under his coat. I thought he was crazy, and was goin’ to kill me like ‘Jack the Ripper.’” She was a girl in age, and obviously one of the most helpless of her order. There is a common impression that such women are attracted to their ruin by vanity and a love of dress. You lose that idea among the wrecks who walk the city streets at night. Anything to flatter their vanity or to gratify their taste is the least likely of all possible experiences to most of them. It is a matter of keeping soul and body together. Some are dexterous pick-pockets, who make large hauls at times—not always, however, for themselves; most are ill-fed, ill-dressed slaves, who, when their tributes are paid, are penniless. Any degree of viciousness may be found among them, and you may find as well a high degree of the innocence of the unmoral, the sense of morality completely lost in the instinct of self-preservation. The girl beside me was like fragile porcelain, her thin lips and nostrils and delicate skin all marred by a pasty, white unwholesomeness. There was a hectic flush in her sister’s face and her eyes were ablaze with disease. We were talking about the case and drifted naturally into further talk about themselves. They were orphans and had long supported themselves by working in a tobacco factory, but there their health had failed, and when they were well enough to work again, they found employment in a laundry. To supplement the “sweating” wages, they had taken to street-walking, and then their end was near. But they spoke as frankly of this last as a “business” as of the earlier occupations, and you saw that, to their thinking, it was only a degree more complete a sale of soul and body.