The railroad man looked hard at his daughter. To him she was a young woman and a virgin, and by these tokens walked a dangerous trail through life. On dark streets, adventurous men lay in wait for all such women and they employed other women, of the Edgley stripe, to decoy innocent virgins into their hands. There was much he would have liked to say to his daughter but not much he could say. Among themselves men could speak openly of such women as the Edgley sisters. They were a thing—well. To tell the truth—during young manhood almost every man went to see such women, went with other men into a house inhabited by such women. To go to such a place one needed to have been drinking a little. It happened. Several young men were together and went from place to place drinking. “Let’s go down the line,” one of them said. The men went straggling off along a street, two by two. Little was said and they were all a little ashamed of their mission. Then they came to a house, always on a dark foul street, and one of the young men, a bold fellow, knocked at the door. A fat woman, with a hard face, came to let them in and they went into a room and stood about, looking foolish. “O, girls,—company,” the fat woman shouted and several women came and stood about. The women looked bored and tired. John Welliver had himself been to such places. Well, that was when he was a young workman. Later a man met a good woman and married her, tried to forget the other women, did forget them. In spite of all the things said, most men after marriage went straight. They had a living to make and children growing up and there was no time for any such nonsense. Among his fellow workmen, the railroad man often spoke of the kind of women he believed the three Edgley women to be. “It’s my notion,” he said, “that it’s better to have such places in order that good women may be let alone, but they ought to be off by themselves somewhere. A good woman never ought to see or know about such cattle.” In the presence of his daughter and of his sister, the housekeeper, now that the subject of the Edgleys had been broached the railroad man was embarrassed. He kept his eye on the plate before him and stole a shy look at his daughter’s face. How white and pure it looked. “I wish I had kept my mouth shut,” he thought—but a sense of the necessity of the occasion led him on. “My Maud might be led to take up with the Edgley women, knowing nothing,” he thought. “Well,” he said, “there are three women in that family and they are all alike. There is one, who works at the hotel—where she meets traveling men—and the oldest one doesn’t work at all. And there is another, too, the youngest that everyone thought was going to turn out all right because she stood high in school and is said to be smart. Everyone thought she would be different but she isn’t, you see. Why, right before everyone, in a berry field, where she was at work, she went into a wood with a man.”