“Perhaps I will be good one of these days,” she said, “and then you can recommend me for a job at two-ten-per. I’d make an ideal secretary for you, Mike. I know all the underworld by name. You could cut out your finger print department and leave it to Kate. What would happen, do you think,” she went on, “if I went to a Salvation Army officer and said, ‘I have been very wicked but now I am going to be good. Will you please assist me. I have no money but I’ve a good heart--’ Mike, he would put me to chopping wood for a week and then he would find me a place as under-secretary to a housemaid in a strictly religious family which gave me two evenings and one Sunday a month. You see, Mike, even at goodliness one has to start at the bottom of the ladder; you can’t break in on the roof. I hate good people.” Michael nodded. “I hate good people, too,” he said, “if they advertise their goodness, but goodness is not hardness or sourness, it is just--goodness. For example,” he went on, “I am good.” “And I am wicked,” she said and appealed with outstretched hands to a startled duck who had waddled to the railings, “choose between us!” He laughed but was instantly serious again. “Your confession puts me in a dilemma. As you are a lady I cannot believe you are lying, as you are a criminal I dare not take your word. I am sufficiently acquainted with your methods to know that your presence is not essential to the committal of a crime, so I can gain nothing by pulling you in.” “Poor Mike,” she said mockingly. “Poor Kate,” he said and the girl detected the note of sincerity in his voice. “Kate, you can’t get away with it,” he said; “you have got to fall sooner or later. Think what it means. Think of that horrible drab life in Aylesbury, where every minute is an hour and every hour an eternity; think of the menial things they will set you to do, scrubbing floors, washing shirts and sewing sacks. Think, how you will be marshalled to church every Sunday and think how you will be stared at and jeered at by friends of the Home Secretary who come to visit the jail.”