A London gentleman is touched when he meets a young girl in a house of ill repute.
He was shocked, to say the least, to find a girl of her tender age at such a place. Yet she dressed like a woman, in fish net stockings and a shin-length silk dress, bowed to the left at the waist. Her wavy brown hair was parted to one side, the bulk of it pinned back with a silver burette. Her cherub face painted in deep rouge.
“Louise, sir. I’m your girl for the half-hour,” she said softly.
He almost went downstairs, to request an older girl, but she looked at him with her brown eyes, wistful, so child-like. He closed the door.
She lit the lamp and dabbed perfume on her neck, turning to him with a well-rehearsed smile. Head tilted in a grown-up game, she rolled her stockings down her lean limb.
He stopped her with a gentle touch. “No. This won’t do.”
She removed the burette, letting her hair gently spill around her face, resting on the nape of her neck. He drew away from her.
She sat on the bed, wounded. “I’m not pretty enough for you, sir?”
“That’s not it. Not it at all! You’re a lovely girl!”
“Then what? Shall we talk first? I’m quite good at conversation. Ask me anything!”
He sat down and took her hand. So delicate and cold. Like a piece of fine china, it was to him.
“Sir, if you send me down, Miss Trudy will be cross with me. I shouldn’t like that. She’s got a horrible switch!”
“How old are you little bird?”
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe eight, or nine.”
“Where are your parents?” he asked, suspecting she was one of hundreds of abandoned urchins from the gutters of the London streets.
She suddenly had a far away look. “Why, sir, do you suppose I have parents?”
“Everyone has had parents at one time or another.”
She scooted to the side, to face him head on. “They have? I don’t know about that. Miss Trudy fetched me off the grates when I was small. Smaller than now. But parents, oh, I just don’t remember.”
He stroked her little face and said, almost to himself, “Who would leave such a child in the streets?” Though he knew people did it all the time. Driven by poverty and despair. He knew, because he stepped over and around such children everyday. Ragged beggars, some no higher than his knees.
But this one touched him, with her pitiful station. Like a little bird, with her match-stick arms and thin pale lips.
“I don’t know, sir. I don’t know who they are or if they ever were!” she cried. “But they’re dreadful if they do exist!”
Seeing he made her upset, he pulled a shilling from his top pocket and handed it to her.
“Tuck this away, little bird. Keep it safe.”
“Oh, no. I must give it to Miss Trudy. The switch, remember?”
“Yes, the switch. Very well.” He took the shilling from her hand.
A knock came to the door, then a shout, “Times up!”
Louise jumped to her feet, rolled up her stocking and secured the burette in her hair. She blew out the flame in the lamp and led him down the stairs.
At the bottom, she turned and looked up at him, a child again for the moment and not the painted harlot she was. “Sir, do you suppose that if I were to have parents, that they would come for me soon?”
He nodded and smiled. “Yes, little bird, they’ll come for you soon.”
She smiled.
Then, amongst the smoke and laughter, she disappeared into the parlor.
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