in which Susan had lived until she perceived the possibilities of a
"connexion," and set up for herself. And the condition of things in that
world, as Susan described it, brought home to Lady Harman just how
sheltered and limited her own upbringing had been. "It isn't right,"
said Susan, "the way they send girls out with fellers into empty houses.
Naturally the men get persecuting them. They don't seem hardly able to
help it, some of them, and I will say this for them, that a lot of the
girls go more than half way with them, leading them on. Still there's a
sort of man won't leave you alone. One I used to be sent out with and a
married man too he was, Oh!--he used to give me a time. Why I've bit his
hands before now, bit hard, before he'd leave go of me. It's my opinion
the married men are worse than the single. Bolder they are. I pushed him
over a scuttle once and he hit his head against a bookcase. I was fair
frightened of him. 'You little devil,' he says; 'I'll be even with you
yet....' Oh! I've been called worse things than that.... Of course a
respectable girl gets through with it, but it's trying and to some it's
a sort of temptation...."

"I should have thought," reflected Lady Harman, "you could have told
someone."

"It's queer," said Susan; "but it never seemed to me the sort of thing a
girl ought to go telling. It's a kind of private thing. And besides, it
isn't exactly easy to tell.... I suppose the Firm didn't want to be
worried by complaints and disputes about that sort of thing. And it
isn't always easy to say just which of the two is to blame."

"But how old are the girls they send out?" asked Lady Harman.

"Some's as young as seventeen or eighteen. It all depends on the sort of
work that's wanted to be done...."

"Of course a lot of them have to marry...."

This lurid little picture of vivid happenings in unoccupied houses and
particularly of the prim, industrious, capable Susan Burnet, biting
aggressive wrists, stuck in Lady Harman's imagination. She seemed to be
looking into hitherto unsuspected pits of simple and violent living just
beneath her feet. Susan told some upholsteress love tales, real love
tales, with a warmth and honesty of passion in them that seemed at once
dreadful and fine to Lady Harman's underfed imagination. Under
encouragement Susan expanded the picture, beyond these mere glimpses of
workshop and piece-work and furtive lust. It appeared that she was
practically the head of