Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/266

 but you must go makin’ extra expense? Where’s the money to come from, I want to know, if you go on like this?”

He turned suddenly upon the elder girl.

“I’ve got something to say to you, Miss. Why wasn’t you at work this morning?”

Amy avoided his look. Her pale face became mottled with alarm, but only for an instant; then she hardened herself and moved her head insolently.

“Why wasn’t you at work? Where’s your week’s money?”

“I haven’t got any.”

“You haven’t got any? Why not?”

For a while she was stubbornly silent, but Hewett constrained her to confession at length. On his way home to-day he had been informed by an acquaintance that Amy was wandering about the streets at an hour when she ought to have been at her employment. Unable to put off the evil moment any longer, the girl admitted that four days ago she was dismissed for bad behaviour, and that since then she had pretended to go to work as usual. The trifling sum paid to her on dismissal she had spent.