"There ain't one chance in a hundred I'm in
wrong."
"In wrong? How?"
"About her bein' who she is."
P. Sybarite subjected the open, naif countenance of the shipping clerk
to a prolonged and doubting scrutiny.
"No, I ain't crazy in the head, neither," George asseverated with some
heat. "I suspicioned somethin' was queer about that girl right along,
but now I _know_ it."
"Explain yourself."
"Ah, it ain't nothin' against her! You don't have to scorch your
collar. _She's_ all right. Only--she 's in bad. I don't s'pose you
seen the evenin' paper?"
"No."
"Well, I picked up the _Joinal_ down to Clancey's--this is it." With
an effective flourish, George drew the sheet from his coat pocket and
unfolded its still damp and pungent pages. "And soon's I seen that,"
he added, indicating a smudged halftone, "I begun to wise up to that
little girl. It's sure some shame about her, all right, all right."
Taking the paper, P. Sybarite examined with perplexity a portrait
labelled "Marian Blessington." Whatever its original aspect, the
coarse mesh of the reproducing process had blurred it to a vague
presentment of the head and shoulders of almost any young woman with
fair hair and regular features: only a certain, almost indefinable
individuality in the pose of the head remotely suggested Molly
Lessing.
In a further endeavour to fathom his meaning, the little bookkeeper
conned carefully the legend attached to the putative likeness:
MARIAN BLESSINGTON
only daughter of the late Nathaniel Blessington, millionaire
founder of the great Blessington chain of department stores.
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