how I should get away, somewhere, where nobody would be likely to come to
ask me about her, and I couldn't go because I had no money and I was just
wishing one day that I could see you when who should I meet but that Long
Jack. He gave me your address and I wrote to ask you to lend me thirty
shillings, the fare to Sydney, and you sent me five pounds, Ned. That's
how I came here. Mary wouldn't have anybody know if she could help it and
I couldn't have stayed there to meet people who knew her and would have
talked of her."

CHAPTER V.

AS THE MOON WANED.

The shadows were beginning to throw again as Nellie finished telling her
story. The quarters had sounded as they walked backwards and forwards. It
was past one when they stopped again under the lamp-post at the corner.

"You see, Ned," she went on. "Mary couldn't help it. It's easy enough to
talk when one has everything one wants or pretty well everything but when
one has nothing or pretty well nothing, it's different. I've been through
it and know. The insults, the temptations, the constant steady pressure
all the time. If you are poor you are thought by swagger people fair
game. And, even workingmen, the young ones, who don't think themselves
able to marry generally, help hunt down their working sisters. Women
can't always earn enough to live decently and men can't always earn
enough to marry on; and when well-to-do men get married they seem to get
worse instead of better, generally. So upon the hungry, the weary, the
hopeless, girls who have to patch their own boots and go threadbare and
shabby while others have pretty things, and who are despised for their
shabbiness by the very hypocrites who cant about love of dress, and who
have folks at home whom they love, and who are penniless as well and in
that abject misery which comes when there isn't any money to buy the
little things, upon these is forced the opportunity to change all this if
only for a little while. Besides, you know, women have the same instincts
as men--why do we disguise these things and pretend they haven't and
shouldn't when we know that it is right and healthy that they should?--
and though it is natural for a woman to hate what is called vice, because
she is better than man--she is the mother-sex, you know--yet the very
instincts which if things were right would be for good and happiness seem
to make things worse when everything is wrong. Women who work, growing
girls as many are, have l