ot as I expected, Mrs Hurtle, certainly. But she was put out a bit.
Poor girl! I've been a girl too, and used to like a bit of outing as
well as any one,--and a dance too; only it was always when mother knew.
She ain't got a mother, poor dear! and as good as no father. And she's
got it into her head that she's that pretty that a great gentleman
will marry her.'

'She is pretty!'

'But what's beauty, Mrs Hurtle? It's no more nor skin deep, as the
scriptures tell us. And what'd a grand gentleman see in Ruby to marry
her? She says she'll leave to-morrow.'

'And where will she go?'

'Just nowhere. After this gentleman,--and you know what that means!
You're going to be married yourself, Mrs Hurtle.'

'We won't mind about that now, Mrs Pipkin.'

'And this'll be your second, and you know how these things are
managed. No gentleman'll marry her because she runs after him. Girls
as knows what they're about should let the gentlemen run after them.
That's my way of looking at it.'

'Don't you think they should be equal in that respect?'

'Anyways the girls shouldn't let on as they are running after the
gentlemen. A gentlemen goes here and he goes there, and he speaks up
free, of course. In my time, girls usen't to do that. But then, maybe,
I'm old-fashioned,' added Mrs Pipkin, thinking of the new
dispensation.

'I suppose girls do speak for themselves more than they did formerly.'

'A deal more, Mrs Hurtle; quite different. You hear them talk of
spooning with this fellow, and spooning with that fellow,--and that
before their very fathers and mothers! When I was young we used to do
it, I suppose,--only not like that.'

'You did it on the sly.'

'I think we got married quicker than they do, anyway. When the
gentlemen had to take more trouble they thought more about it. But if
you wouldn't mind speaking to Ruby to-morrow, Mrs Hurtle, she'd listen
to you when she wouldn't mind a word I said to her. I don't want her
to go away from this, out into the Street, till she knows where she's
to go to, decent. As for going to her young man,--that's just walking
the streets.'

Mrs Hurtle promised that she would speak to Ruby, though when making
the promise she could not but think of her unfitness for the task. She
knew nothing of the country. She had not a single friend in it, but
Paul Montague;--and she had run after him with as little discretion as
Ruby Ruggles was showing in running after her lover. Who was she that
she shou