two with interest. Sally's brain clicked an impression, and she
listened to a stammering from Gaga which aroused her contempt. "He's
hardly a man at all," she thought. "He's soppy. Rose can have him. I
wish her joy of him. She can have him--and twenty like him, if she
wants.... I don't know so much about that. Why should she? She's stuck
up. Why shouldn't I have some fun, if I want to? It's nothing to do with
Rose Anstey what I do, and what Gaga does...."

Her demand was unanswerable, because it was addressed to one who did not
habitually withdraw herself lest she should give pain to others. If Rose
was jealous, that showed the sort of cat she was. And in any case, who
was Rose? Sally was bright in her responses to the soft voice, so that
Gaga was pleased; but the girls could all see that her manner was cool,
and not the flustered eagerness of a beggar. Rose's neighbour whispered.
When the evening was over and Gaga and his mother had gone, and the
girls had all piled into two railway compartments, somebody, whose
voice was unrecognisable in the darkness, called from the other
carriage:

"What price Gaga on the love path? Whey!"

There was great laughter. Even Sally joined in it. Going home, the other
girls in her carriage all insisted upon hearing the song again, and as
they all had the quick ear of Cockneys they could sing it in chorus by
the time the train reached its journey's end. Sally had become, for a
time, the heroine of the occasion. Only Rose, in the other carriage, had
made her protest against the song and its singer.

"Love path!" she said, in a warm voice of indignation. "She's nothing
but a cocket--a white-faced cocket. That's what she is. She nothing but
a white-faced cocket, that Sally Minto!"

From that time onward that was Sally's name among the girls--"Cocket,"
or "White-faced Cocket." Rose had coined the phrase which would stick.
When Sally heard her name the next day, through Muriel's indiscretion,
she looked over at Rose with pinched nostrils and a little dry smile.
She was flattered. The name was the product of Rose's jealousy and
injured vanity; but it was life to Sally, for it was a testimony--the
first she had ever had--to her charm and her dangerousness.

iv

She did not tell Toby the next night about her singing. She rather
carefully refrained from telling him, not out of considerateness, but
from a sort of scorn for his jealousy. To herself she said "Anything for
a quiet life." Tob