GIRL [_treating it as a matter of course_] Why, it was my master, of course. DOCTOR. Go on, go on. Tell us about it. Your mistress found out. What happened then? GIRL [_in the same tone_] She sent me packing. I’d have done the same, if I’d been her. DOCTOR. Go on, what are you stopping for? Talk away. The gentleman’s from the country; he doesn’t understand about these things. GIRL [_gaily_] Right oh! I’ll tell you all about it. One night the boss comes up to my room in his socks and says: ’If you shriek out, off you go!’ Then— DOCTOR. No, no. Begin after you lost your place. GIRL. All right, if you think he’ll think it funny. DOCTOR. Never mind that. Say what you’re doing now. GIRL. Why, I come here every day. DOCTOR. But before you come here? GIRL. Oh, I do my five hours on the streets. DOCTOR. Well, how’s that? The gentleman’s from the country, I tell you. He wants to know. Go on. GIRL. There now, I wouldn’t have thought there was anyone didn’t know that. Why, I rig myself out as a work-girl, with a little bag on my arm—they make togs special for that, y’ know—and then I trot along by the shop windows. Pretty hard work, too, ‘cause to do it real well you have to walk fast. Then I stops in front of some shop or other. Nine times out of ten that does the trick. It just makes me laugh, I tell you, but you’d think all the men had learnt what to say out of a book. There’s only two things they say, that’s all. It’s either: ‘You walk very fast’ or else: ‘Aren’t you afraid, all alone?’ One knows what that means, eh? Or else I do the ‘young widow’ fake. You’ve got to go a bit fast like that, too. I don’t know why, but it makes ’em catch on. They find out precious soon I’m not a young widow, but that doesn’t make any odds. [_Seriously_] There’re things like that I don’t understand. DOCTOR. What sort are they, then? Shopwalkers, commercial travellers? GIRL. I like that! Why, I only take real gentlemen. DOCTOR. They say that’s what they are. GIRL. Oh, I can see well enough. Besides, a whole lot of ’em have orders on. That makes me laugh, too. When they meet you, they’ve got their little bits of ribbon stuck in their buttonhole. Then they follow you and they haven’t anything. I wanted to find out, so I looked over my shoulder in a glass and saw my man snap the ribbon out with his finger and thumb just as you do when you’re shelling peas. You know? DOCTOR. Yes, I know. Tell us about your child. What became of it? GIRL. Oh, I left it at that place in the Rue Denfer. DOCTOR [_to Loches_] The foundlings’ hospital. LOCHES. Did you not mind doing that? GIRL. It was better than dragging it about with me to starve. LOCHES. Still, it was your child.