“I bringed ‘er up deh way a dauter oughta be bringed up an’ dis is how she served me!  She went teh deh devil deh first chance she got!  May Gawd forgive her.”

When arrested for drunkenness she used the story of her daughter’s downfall with telling effect upon the police justices.  Finally one of them said to her, peering down over his spectacles:  “Mary, the records of this and other courts show that you are the mother of forty-two daughters who have been ruined.  The case is unparalleled in the annals of this court, and this court thinks—­”

The mother went through life shedding large tears of sorrow.  Her red face was a picture of agony.

Of course Jimmie publicly damned his sister that he might appear on a higher social plane.  But, arguing with himself, stumbling about in ways that he knew not, he, once, almost came to a conclusion that his sister would have been more firmly good had she better known why.  However, he felt that he could not hold such a view.  He threw it hastily aside.

Chapter XIV

In a hilarious hall there were twenty-eight tables and twenty-eight women and a crowd of smoking men.  Valiant noise was made on a stage at the end of the hall by an orchestra composed of men who looked as if they had just happened in.  Soiled waiters ran to and fro, swooping down like hawks on the unwary in the throng; clattering along the aisles with trays covered with glasses; stumbling over women’s skirts and charging two prices for everything but beer, all with a swiftness that blurred the view of the cocoanut palms and dusty monstrosities painted upon the walls of the room.  A bouncer, with an immense load of business upon his hands, plunged about in the crowd, dragging bashful strangers to prominent chairs, ordering waiters here and there and quarreling furiously with men who wanted to sing with the orchestra.

The usual smoke cloud was present, but so dense that heads and arms seemed entangled in it.  The rumble of conversation was replaced by a roar.  Plenteous oaths heaved through the air.  The room rang with the shrill voices of women bubbling o’er with drink-laughter.  The chief element in the music of the orchestra was speed.  The musicians played in intent fury.  A woman was singing and smiling upon the stage, but no one took notice of her.  The rate at which the piano, cornet and violins were going, seemed to impart wildness to the half-drunken crowd.  Beer glasses were emptied at a gulp and conversation became a rapid chatter.  The smoke eddied and swirled like a shadowy river hurrying toward some unseen falls.  Pete and Maggie entered the hall and took chairs at a table near the door.  The woman who was seated there made an attempt to occupy Pete’s attention and, failing, went away.

Three weeks had passed since the girl had left home.  The air of spaniel-like dependence had been magnified and showed its direct effect in the peculiar off-handedness and ease of Pete’s ways toward her.