every district in the United Kingdom. The broken home, stepmothers,
too many in family, the fascination which London exercises for the
country-grown girl--all and each of these reasons were responsible
for all this womanhood of a certain type pouring down Oxford Street
at eight o'clock in the evening. Each of them was the centre of her
little universe, and, on the whole, they were mostly happy, their
gladness being largely ignorance of more fortunate conditions of
life. Ill-fed, under-paid, they were insignificant parts of the
great industrial machine which had got them in its grip, so that
their function was to make rich men richer, or to pay 10 per cent,
dividends to shareholders who were careless how these were earned.
Nightly, this river of girls flows down Oxford Street, to return in
an hour or two, when the human tide can be seen flowing in the
contrary direction. Meantime, men of all ages and conditions were
skilfully tacking upon this river, itching to quench the thirst from
which they suffered. It needed all the efforts of the guardian
angels, in whose existence Mavis had been taught to believe, to
guide the component parts of this stream from the oozy marshland,
murky ways, and bottomless quicksands which beset its course.




CHAPTER SEVEN

WIDER HORIZONS


Seven weeks passed quickly for Mavis, during which her horizon
sensibly widened. She learned many things, the existence of which