The house was kept by an old man and woman, he a carpenter almost too old, yet who went to daily work. He used to fetch gin and beer for us. There was no lodger in the house. They were a decent couple, and after a time I used to talk to the old woman, and when Mary once went away ill, she got me a beautifully shaped girl, I had offered her money to get me a girl of about fourteen years of age, a virgin. The streets about there swarmed with girls and boys who played about at night, I could hear their smutty language as they ran after each other yelling, laughing and quarrelling. She tried, but never could; she was not a woman who undertook that sort of thing, but the money tempted her. "There are lots of girls about," said she, "their mothers don't care what they do, but you want a virgin,—
