“Here’s what I mean,” her mother went on. “And I’m telling you, Hubert, so that you’ll know and so that nobody can be laughing at you behind your back. Do you know the lane that runs alongside the Children’s School over on Patrick Street? Well, you wouldn’t know it, being a stranger here, but it’s there, and there’s nothing at the end of it but a disused stable with a broken door. The door got broken about a year ago when some young hooligans got in there one night, for what reason nobody knows and nobody likes to think, and they were never found, although we all have our ideas as to who they were. No decent girl would go down that lane by herself, and at night no girl would go down there with anybody if she had any respect at all for herself, but the tenth of June last, Rose slipped out of here when my back was turned and waited there at that stable for over two hours at night, from half past eight until nearly eleven, waiting for a young fellow down the street, a young fellow, a young rascal that’s not good enough for Rose to wipe her boots on, or wasn’t good enough until she let him wipe his boots on her.”

“Oh, Mother!” Rose cried.

“That’s what he did,” the mother said. “And the reason she went there and waited was this. He came in here to the shop and told her he’d made a bet with some of his chums that she would meet him there, and he told her that if she didn’t meet him he’d lose his week’s wages and be a laughingstock besides. And, of course, without thinking twice or asking me, off she went in her best shoes and stood there for two hours. Stood there. Waiting for him. Any other girl in the world would have known what to do, but not this poor soft thing. So he won his bet and she’ll never live it down. They broke their hearts laughing at her. And I’ll never live it down, and poor Jimmy had his heart broken with the way they made fun of him in school. That’s what she did. She did it out of softheartedness, and I know that, and I know she meant no harm, but it’s not right for a girl to be so soft and so careless and to have that little respect for herself and her family. I’ve been meaning to tell you about this. I never intended to let her conceal it from you.”