oad, and I've never even seen
her since."

"And what's happened to Dolly?" asked Michael.

"Oh, good job if that love-boy of hers does punch into her. Silly cow!
She ought to know better. Fancy going off as soft as you like with that
big-mouthed five-to-two, and after I'd just given her six of my new
handkerchiefs."

Michael wished he could have an opportunity of explaining to Barnes that
on account of Daisy's friendship for Dolly, he and she and the cast-off
had spent a night in the police-cells. He thought it would have amused
him.

"Where's the Half Moon?" he asked instead.

Daisy said it was a place in Glasshouse Street for which she had no very
great affection. However, Michael was anxious to see it; and soon they
left the Orange to visit the Half Moon.

It was a public-house with nothing that was demirep in its exterior; but
upstairs there was a room frequented after eleven o'clock by ladies of
the town. They walked up a narrow twisting staircase carpeted with
bright red felt and lit by a red-shaded lamp, and found themselves in a
room even more densely fumed with tobacco smoke than downstairs at the
Orange. In a corner was an electric organ which was fed with a stream of
pennies and blared forth its repertory of ten tunes with maddening
persistence. One of these tunes was gay enough to make the girls wish to
dance, and always with its recurrence there was a certain amount of
cake-walking which was immediately stopped by a commissionaire who stood
in the doorway and shouted "Order, please! Quiet, please! No dancing,
ladies!" To the nearest couple he always whispered that the police were
outside.

Daisy, having stigmatized the Half Moon as the rottenest hole within a
mile of the Dilly, proceeded to become more cheerful with every penny
dropped into the slot; and finally she invited Michael to come back with
her to Judd Street, as her boy had gone down to Margate to see Young
Sancy, a prospective lightweight champion, who was training there.

"Anyway, you can see me home," she said. "Even if you don't come in.
Besides, my flat's all right. It is, really. You know. Comfortable. He's
very good to me, is Bert, though he's a bit soppified. He dresses very
nice, and he earns good money. Well, three pound a week. That's not so
bad, is it?"

"That's all right," said Barnes. "With what you earn as well."

"There's a nerve," said Daisy. "Well, I can't stay moping indoors all
the evening, can I? But he's most sho