"Yes. The man buys the checks downstairs, on a commutation schedule, just the w'y we used to buy our drink checks in a beer garden. The girls never see real money--except when they make a touch, and then it's not any use--because they cash in their checks to the madam, and she counts them against what her young l'idies owe her. Even at that"--Evelyn nearly sat upright in her animation--"even at that, they do s'y the men try to jew you down as badly as they do here. I've always noticed that the honestest man that ever lived will try to cheat a girl. But you'll learn it all in time, girlie. I'm only sorry that you'll never see the better plices." Violet missed the innuendo, but she asked: "Then there are better and worse?" Evelyn laughed. "Right-oh!" she said. "The horrid truth is, my dear, that we and Rose are hopelessly middle-class. I wish you could see the better, and as for the worse, wait till you live in a plice where there are sliding panels in the wall, and men are robbed every night." If there had been any sympathy in the Englishwoman's tone, Violet might have appealed to her for whatever of real assistance she could give, but Evelyn's scarcely interrupted monologue soon made it clear that she had no help to offer. "It's all rotten," she continued,--"all rotten because it has to be. Do you fancy that, if Rose wasn't sure of us, she wouldn't have her ear at that keyhole now? She can call in Angel half the time, and one cop or another's never far around the corner. Three weeks ago Phil Beekman, one of her best customers, tried to balance a lamp on his nose and broke it, and Riley was there to arrest him for disorderly conduct before the boy could get to his wallet. He had to pay twenty-five dollars--half went to Riley--for that fifteen-dollar lamp that Rose had insured for eighteen. We're all that w'y; we all have to be spies on the rest. I am, you soon will be, and that little Wanda--well, of course, Rose makes too much fuss over her." "What do you mean?" asked Violet. But Evelyn only shook her towsled yellow head. "I mean, my dear," she said, "that there are some things, you know, that even I don't fancy discussing." "She was an immigrant, wasn't she?" "Oh, yes," Evelyn acquiesced, with a yawn. Already her restless heart was tiring of the conversation and her insistent thirst was crying for more alcohol. "Wanda came over here to be a housemaid. She landed in Philadelphia and went directly to an employment agency, like a good girlie. They took her money for their commission in getting her a job, and then they sold her right over here to a sailors' joint." "For housework?" "Housework? My dear, you overact your part. There's no housework done in those plices; but Wanda's won her w'y up in the world. Here she is at Rose's, if you please, though by what sort of housework I shan't tell you." "I wish----"