than I was of the river; and so would you have been in my place.  That clergyman got me a situation as a scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked.  Then I was a waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo station:  fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board.  That was considered a great promotion for me.  Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereigns in her purse.

VIVIE [grimly] My aunt Lizzie!

MRS WARREN.  Yes; and a very good aunt to have, too.  She’s living down at Winchester now, close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies there.  Chaperones girls at the country ball, if you please.  No river for Liz, thank you!  You remind me of Liz a little:  she was a first-rate business woman—­saved money from the beginning—­never let herself look too like what she was—­never lost her head or threw away a chance.  When she saw I’d grown up good-looking she said to me across the bar “What are you doing there, you little fool? wearing out your health and your appearance for other people’s profit!” Liz was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels; and she thought we two could save faster than one.  So she lent me some money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into business with her as a partner.  Why shouldn’t I have done it?  The house in Brussels was real high class:  a much better place for a woman to be in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned.  None of the girls were ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo bar, or at home.  Would you have had me stay in them and become a worn out old drudge before I was forty?

VIVIE [intensely interested by this time] No; but why did you choose that business?  Saving money and good management will succeed in any business.

MRS WARREN.  Yes, saving money.  But where can a woman get the money to save in any other business?  Could y o u save out of four shillings a week and keep yourself dressed as well?  Not you.  Of course, if youre a plain woman and can’t earn anything more; or if you have a turn for music, or the stage, or newspaper-writing:  thats different.  But neither Liz nor I had any turn for such things at all:  all we had was our appearance and our turn for pleasing men.  Do you think we were such fools as to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us as shopgirls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages?  Not likely.

VIVIE.  You were certainly quite justified—­from the business point of view.