Dawkins, who was a mid-Victorian, flushed awkwardly.
"I really had to let the girl go, ma'am!" she explained with an outraged air. "I hardly know how to tell you--such a thing in this house! I couldn't possibly have her round. I was afraid she might corrupt the other girls, ma'am--and they are such a self-respecting lot--almost quite ladylike, ma'am. So I simply paid her and told her to take herself off."
"You shouldn't have turned her out into the street like that, Dawkins!" she expostulated. "Where has she gone?"
Dawkins gazed at her large feet in embarrassment.
"I don't know, ma'am," she admitted. "I didn't suppose you'd want her here so I sent her away. It was quite inconvenient, too--with the servant problem what it is. But I'm hoping to get another this afternoon from Miss Healey's."
"I am seriously displeased with you, Dawkins!" she returned severely. "Of course, I am shocked at any girl in my household misbehaving herself, but--I--wouldn't want her to be sent away--under such circumstances. It would be quite heartless. Yes, I am very much disturbed!"
"I'm sorry, ma'am," answered the housekeeper penitently. "But I was only thinking of the other girls."
"Well, it's too late to do anything about it now," repeated her mistress. "But I'm sorry, Dawkins; very sorry, indeed. We have responsibilities toward these people! However--this is Thursday, isn't it?--we'll have veal for lunch as usual--and she was so pretty!" she added inconsequently.
"H'm. That was the trouble!" sniffed the housekeeper. "We're well rid of her. You'd think a girl would have some consideration for her employer--if nothing else. In a sense she is a guest in the house and should behave herself as such!"
"Yes, that is quite true!" agreed her employer. "Still--yes, Brown Betty is very well for dessert. That will do, Dawkins."
Behind the curtain of this casual conversation had been enacted a melodrama as intensely vital and elemental as any of Shakespeare's tragedies, for the day Dawkins had fired Katie O'Connell--"for reasons," as she said--and told her to go back where she came from or anywhere she liked for that matter, so long as she got out of her sight, Katie's brother Shane in the back room of McManus' gin palace gave Red McGurk--for the same "reasons"--a certain option and, the latter having scornfully declined to avail himself of it, had then and there put a bullet through his neck. But this, naturally, Miss Beekman did not know.