If
you had had friends before, when it happened, somebody to speak for
you, I am sure nothing like what did happen to you could have
happened."
"I come of respectable people," she said quietly. "But they are all
dead. I was an orphan before I came to Boston. The friends I had in
the little inland town I came from would not have understood. They
did not approve of my coming to the city at all. Oh, I wish I had
not come!"
"And now you ought not to stay here. Should you?"
"What can I do? I must support myself. I cannot go back. I could not
explain those two years. Yet I am always expecting somebody to make
inquiry for Sheila Macklin. And then I cannot conceal my story
longer."
He nodded thoughtfully. It seemed that, once she had opened the dam
of speech, she was glad to talk about herself and her trouble.
"I do hate the city. I have been so unhappy here. If I were only a
man I would start right out into the country. I would tramp until I
found a place to work. You don't know what it means to be a girl,
Captain Latham, and be in trouble."
"I guess all city girls aren't alike after all," he said with a
short laugh. Then he looked at her keenly again. "Do you know what
sort of an errand brought me up into the city from T-Wharf to-day?"
"What errand? I cannot imagine.
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