Page:Gissing - The Unclassed, vol. I, 1884.djvu/68

 little children living in disorderly houses, and the sight of them arouses strange speculations. But Ida's lot was to be a better one than that of the average prostitute's child. In the profession her mother had chosen there are, as in all professions, grades and differences. She was by no means a vicious girl, she had no love of riot for its own sake; she would greatly have preferred a decent mode of life, had it seemed practicable. Hence she did not associate herself with the rank and file of abandoned women; her resorts were not the crowded centres; her abode was not in the quarters consecrated to her business. In all parts of London there are quiet by-streets of houses given up to lodging-letting, wherein are to be found many landladies, who, good easy souls, trouble little about the private morals of their lodgers, so long as no positive disorder comes about and no public scandal is occasioned. A girl who says that she is occupied in a workroom is—alas!—never presumed to be able to afford the luxury of strict virtue, and if