"You have been in stir--prison, I mean." She hastily corrected the lapse into underworld slang.

Came a distressed muttering of a.s.sent from the girl.

"How sad!" Aggie remarked, in a voice of shocked pity for one so inconceivably unfortunate. "How very, very sad!"

This ingenuous method of diversion was put to an end by the entrance of Mary, who stopped short on seeing the limp figure huddled in the chair.

"A visitor, Agnes?" she inquired.

At the sound of her voice, and before Aggie could hit on a fittingly elegant form of reply, the girl looked up. And now, for the first time, she spoke with some degree of energy, albeit there was a sinister undertone in the husky voice.

"You're Miss Turner?" she questioned.

"Yes," Mary said, simply. Her words rang kindly; and she smiled encouragement.

A gasp burst from the white lips of the girl, and she cowered as one stricken physically.

"Mary Turner! Oh, my G.o.d! I----" She hid her face within her arms and sat bent until her head rested on her knees in an abas.e.m.e.nt of misery.

Vaguely startled by the hysterical outburst from the girl, Mary's immediate thought was that here was a pitiful instance of one suffering from starvation.

"Joe," she directed rapidly, "have Fannie bring a gla.s.s of milk with an egg and a little brandy in it, right away."

The girl in the chair was shaking soundlessly under the stress of her emotions. A few disjointed phrases fell from her quivering lips.

"I didn't know--oh, I couldn't!"

"Don't try to talk just now," Mary warned, rea.s.suringly. "Wait until you've had something to eat."

Aggie, who had observed developments closely, now lifted her voice in tardy lamentations over her own stupidity. There was no affectation of the fine lady in her self-reproach.

"Why, the poor gawk's hungry!" she exclaimed! "And I never got the dope on her. Ain't I the simp!"

The girl regained a degree of self-control, and showed something of forlorn dignity.

"Yes," she said dully, "I'm starving."

Mary regarded the afflicted creature with that sympathy born only of experience.

"Yes," she said softly, "I understand." Then she spoke to Aggie. "Take her to my room, and let her rest there for a while. Have her drink the egg and milk slowly, and then lie down for a few minutes anyhow."

Aggie obeyed with an air of bustling activity.

"Sure, I will!" she declared. She went to the girl and helped her to stand up. "We'll fix you out all right," she said, comfortingly. "Come along with me.... Hungry! Gee, but that's tough!"

Half an hour afterward, while Mary was at her desk, giving part of her attention to Joe Garson, who sat near, and part to a rather formidable pile of neatly arranged papers, Aggie reported with her charge, who, though still shambling of gait, and stooping, showed by some faint color in her face and an increased steadiness of bearing that the food had already strengthened her much.

"She would come," Aggie explained. "I thought she ought to rest for a while longer anyhow." She half-shoved the girl into a chair opposite the desk, in an absurd travesty on the maternal manner.

"I'm all right, I tell you," came the querulous protest.

Whereupon, Aggie gave over the uncongenial task of mothering, and settled herself comfortably in a chair, with her legs merely crossed as a compromise between ease and propriety.

"Are you quite sure?" Mary said to the girl. And then, as the other nodded in a.s.sent, she spoke with a compelling kindliness. "Then you must tell us all about it--this trouble of yours, you know. What is your name?"

Once again the girl had recourse to the swift, searching, furtive glance, but her voice was colorless as she replied, listlessly:

"Helen Morris."

Mary regarded the girl with an expression that was inscrutable when she spoke again.

"I don't have to ask if you have been in prison," she said gravely.

"Your face shows it."

"I--I came out--three months ago," was the halting admission.

Mary watched the shrinking figure reflectively for a long minute before she spoke again. Then there was a deeper resonance in her voice.

"And you'd made up your mind to go straight?"

"Yes." The word was a whisper.

"You were going to do what the chaplain had told you," Mary went on in a voice vibrant with varied emotions. "You were going to start all over again, weren't you? You were going to begin a new life, weren't you?"

The bent head of the girl bent still lower in a.s.sent. There came a cynical note into Mary's utterance now.

"It doesn't work very well, does it?" she asked, bitterly.

The girl gave sullen agreement.

"No," she said dully; "I'm whipped."

Mary's manner changed on the instant. She spoke cheerfully for the first time.

"Well, then," she questioned, "how would you like to work with us?"

The girl looked up for a second with another of her fleeting, stealthy glances.

"You--you mean that----?"

Mary explained her intention in the matter very explicitly. Her voice grew boastful.

"Our kind of work pays well when you know how. Look at us."

Aggie welcomed the opportunity for speech, too long delayed.

"Hats from Joseph's, gowns from Lucile's, and cracked ice from Tiffany's. But it ain't ladylike to wear it," she concluded with a reproachful glance at her mentor.

Mary disregarded the frivolous interruption, and went on speaking to the girl, and now there was something pleasantly cajoling in her manner.