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in England? Why my Sue?’
    ‘ Because she is yours, Mrs S,’ he answered. ‘Because I trust her; because she’s a good girl—which is to say, a bad girl, not too nice about the fine points of the law.’
    She nodded. ‘And how do you mean,’ she asked next, ‘to cut the shine?’
    Again he looked at me; but he still spoke to her.
    ‘She shall have two thousand pounds,’ he said, smoothing his whiskers; ‘and shall take any of the little lady’s bits and frocks and jewels that she likes.’
    That was the deal.
    We thought it over.
    ‘What do you say?’ he said at last—to me, this time. And then, when I did not answer: ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘to spring this upon you; but you can see the little time I have had to act in. I must get a girl soon. I should like it to be you, Sue. I should like it to be you, more than anyone. But if it is not to be, then tell me quickly, will you?—so I might find out another.’
    ‘Dainty will do it,’ said John, when he heard that. ‘Dainty was a maid once—wasn’t you, Daint?—for a lady in a great house at Peckham.’
    ‘As I recall,’ said Mr Ibbs, drinking his tea, ‘Dainty lost that place through putting a hat-pin to the lady’s arm.’
    ‘She was a bitch to me,’ said Dainty, ‘and got my dander up. This girl don’t sound like a bitch. She’s a flat, you said so. I could maid for a flat.’
    ‘It was Sue that was asked,’ said Mrs Sucksby quietly. ‘And she still ain’t said.’
    Then, again they all looked at me; and their eyes made me nervous. I turned my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It seems a rum sort of plot to me. Set me up, as maid to a lady? How shall I know what to do?’
    ‘We can teach you,’ said Gentleman. ‘Dainty can teach you, since she knows the business. How hard can it be? You must only sit and simper, and hold the lady’s salts.’
    I said, ‘Suppose the lady won’t want me for her maid? Why should she want me?’
    But he had thought of that. He had thought of everything. He said he meant to pass me off as his old nurse’s sister’s child—a city girl come on hard times. He said he thought the lady would take me then, for his sake.
    He said, ‘We’ll write you a character—sign it Lady Fanny of Bum Street, something like that—she won’t know any better. She never saw Society, doesn’t know London from Jerusalem. Who can she ask?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘Suppose she don’t care for you, so much as you are hoping?’
    He grew modest. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think I might be permitted by now, to know when a green girl likes me.’
    ‘Suppose,’ said Mrs Sucksby then, ‘she don’t like you quite enough? Suppose she turns out another Miss Bamber or Miss Finch?’
    Miss Bamber and Miss Finch were two of the other heiresses he had almost netted. But he heard their names, and snorted. ‘She won’t,’ he said, ‘turn out like them, I know it. Those girls had fathers—ambitious fathers, with lawyers on every side. This girl’s uncle can see no further than the last page of his book. As to her not liking me enough—well, I can only say this: I think she will.’
    ‘Enough to do a flit, from her uncle’s house?’
    ‘It’s a grim house,’ he answered, ‘for a girl of her years.’
    ‘But it’s the years that will work against you,’ said Mr Ibbs. You picked up bits and pieces of Law, of course, in a line like his. ‘Till she is one-and-twenty, she shall need her uncle’s say. Take her as fast and as quiet as you like: he shall come and take her back again. You being her husband won’t count for buttons, then.’
    ‘But her being my wife, will.—If you understand me,’ said Gentleman slyly.
    Dainty looked blank. John saw her face. ‘The jiggling,’ he said.
    ‘She shall be ruined,’ said Mrs Sucksby. ‘No other gent will want her, then.’
    Dainty gaped more than ever.
    ‘Never mind it,’ said Mr Ibbs, lifting his hand. Then, to Gentleman: ‘It’s tricky.