Mayme’s face became grave and practical.

“That’s different,” said she.  “What’s her lay?”

“Lay?  I don’t know—­”

“What’s her line?  What’s she done to get pinched?”

“Shoplifting.  At the special night sale of the Emporium.”

“You’re tellin’ me!  In the silks, huh?”

“What do you know about it?  My God!  Is it in the papers already?”

“Keep your hair on, Buddy.  I work there, and I heard about that pinch.  Swell young married lady.  Say,” she added, after a thoughtful pause:  “has she got somethin’ comin’?”

“Something coming?  How?  What?”

“Don’t be dumb.  A kid.”

He stared.  She was looking at him with unabashed frankness.  Those who live in the close, rough intimacy of the slums do not cherish false shame about the major facts of life.

“Suppose she has?” queried the youth sulkily.

“Why, that’ll be all right, you poor boob,” returned the kindly Mayme.  “The judge’ll let her off with a warning.”

“How do you know?”

“They always do.  Those cases are common.  Dolan ought to be canned for makin’ a pinch of a lady in the fam’ly way.”

“What if they do let her off?” lamented the youth.  “It’ll be in all the papers and I’ll be ruined.  My life’s spoiled.  I might as well leave the city.”

“Ah, don’t do a mean trick like that to the old town!” besought the sardonic Mayme.  “Where do you come in to get hurt?”

He burst into the hectic grievances of the pampered and spoiled child.  His family was just getting a foothold in Society (with an almost holy emphasis on the word) and now they were disgraced.  All was up.  Their new, precariously held acquaintances would drop them.  In his petulant grief he did an amazing thing; he produced a bunch of clippings from the local society columns, setting forth, in the printed company of the Shining Ones, the doings (mostly charitable) of Mrs. Samuel Berthelin, her daughter, Mrs. Harris, and her son, David, referred to glowingly as “the scion of the wealth and position of the late lamented financier.”

Mayme was impressed.  Like most shop-girls she was a fervent reader of society news. (If shop-girls did not read this fine flower of American democracy, nobody would, except those who wait eagerly and anxiously for their names to appear.) She perceived—­not knowing that the advertising leverage of the Berthelin Loan Agency had forced those insecure portals of print for the entry of Mrs. Berthelin and her progeny—­that she was in the presence of the Great.  Capacity for awe was not in Mayme’s independent soul.  But she was interested and sympathetic.  Here was a career worth saving!

“Let’s go over to the station-house,” said she.  “I know some of the cops.”