I oughtn't to have kept that thousand, only
Praddy assured me it was 'clean' money."
_Mrs. W._: "So it was. I won it at Monte. I don't often gamble now,
I hate losing money. But we'd had a splendid season at Roquebrune
and I sat down one day at the tables, a bit reckless-like. Seemed as
if I couldn't lose. When I got up and left I had won Thirty thousand
francs. So I says to myself: 'This shall go to my little girl: I'll
send it through Praddy and he'll pay it into her bank. Then I shan't
feel anxious about her.'"
"Mother! what a strange creature you are! Such a mixture of good and
bad--for I suppose it _is_ bad, I feel somehow it _is_ bad,
trafficking in women's bodies, as they put it sensationally. Towards
me you have always been compact of kindness; you took every
precaution to have me brought up well, out of knowledge of any
impurity; and well and modernly educated. You left me quite free to
marry whom I liked ... but ... but ... you stuck to this horrible
career..."
"Well, Vivie. I did. But did you make any great effort to turn me
from it? Besides, _is_ it horrible? I won't promise much for Berlin
and Buda-Pest or even Vienna, because I haven't been in those
directions for ever so long, and the Germans are reg'lar getting out
of hand, they are, working up for something. I dessay if you looked
in at the Warren Hotels in those places you might find lots to say
against 'em.
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