As I watched the lass it occurred to me that the house was doing its former business again, and she looking up at the name of the street as if to see if she was right, I concluded it was an assignation there. After watching her for five minutes I crossed, spoke to her, asked if she'd have a glass of wine, said how beautiful she was and so on. “No,” she was waiting for a friend she re-plied, and begged I'd leave her, she didn't want to be seen talking to a gentleman. Then she walked up and down the street, I following and persisting, till she asked me the exact time, and on hearing it. — “Oh I'm late, I wish you'd go, what do you keep following me for when I don't want you, I'm waiting for a friend.” — I left her, giving a look at the hotel which had an ambiguous aspect, and concluded that her friend was going to take her there, and that she was no harlot tho she'd had the persuader up her.
I was at my shop a long time and was about to go home, when the lass again came into my mind, so went back [I get my chances, I'm sure, by instinct] found her still waiting and looking anxiously up and down the street. I crossed over and asked if her friend had not come. She began to whimper, saying he had not. She was late, she was afraid, and he'd gone away angry, she'd never met him there before, and hoped he wasn't ill etc. etc. Her trouble was opening her mouth and mind, and she no longer was curt and rude to me. “Perhaps you've made a mistake in the hour.” — “No I ain't but I was late, here's the letter.” Fumbling in her bosom she produced one and was going to show me it, when she thought better. Then after a good deal of talk, advice, and persuasion, she went to a neighbouring public house with me.
She was so cold, she said when she accepted the invitation, and perhaps on that account drank two glasses of port wine very quickly. She recollected my having been in the railway carriage. “Oh if my friend should be waiting now.” I told her that it was not likely, that it was a shame to keep such a lovely girl waiting, and so on. Her vanity again showed itself — I have met many women as vain as peacocks, but think this lass was the vainest. Seeing my chance, I laid on the flattery till it was almost laughable, but she swallowed it all. I told her I'd been wild for her, since I had seen her beautiful breasts peeping out of her pretty frock. “Yes, isn't it pretty, he told me to come in it” — saying that she undid her cloak to show me. — “Lovely, exquisite! I'd give a sovereign to see you strip to your waist, I'm sure you're perfect.” — “My friend says I am.” — She looked half sheepish but delighted. — “Have you any hair in your armpits?” I risked. — She actually colored up, laughed, reflected seemingly, and then. “A little. — Oh! I must go, perhaps he's there now.” — “Nonsense he's playing with you.” — “It's a shame if he is, I've come such a way, but I must go and see.” — Out we both went, I keeping a long way off from her, and she came back in despair. “Let us have another glass of wine at a quieter house, and you shall go and look again in a quarter of an hour.”
At length after going out again to look for her friend, she consented. — Quite uncertain what the character of the house now was, and not knowing any other about there, I went to it and asked for a bedroom for the night. — An elderly woman said “yes,” but there was a sitting room with it, and she couldn't let me without the other. I hired it, said our baggage would come soon, and found myself alone with the lass in a fairly comfortable room with a fire, which I soon roused to a blaze. — Ordering wine, the landlady said they hadn't a spirit license but would fetch anything. — I paid money down and port wine came.
The lass threw off her cloak and we sat by the fire, I kissed her often. — She liked it, but I took no great liberty then: waiting till the fire had warmed her flesh, and the wine heated her cunt a bit. Then I began to feel hungry, so was she, the landlady said she had nothing in the house but could get us anything, and in twenty minutes there were mutton chops (not so bad) on the table, and soon were in our stomachs. — “Don't you want to piddle?” said I, thinking it quite time to break the ice. — She laughed uneasily and said she did, went to the bedroom and returning. “Have you dried it?” — “Ohoo” she chuckled, “I wonder if my friend's come.” — I went to the bedroom, and turned the gas full on there to warm the room, no fire being alight.
I told her it was a waste of time to look for her friend now, he wouldn't expect her to wait an hour and a half for him. “If he is waiting close by, what will he think if he sees you going out of a house? — he'll never speak with you again.” That had not occurred to her. — “I ought not to have come here” quoth she sadly. I pulled the sofa to the fire and we sat down, putting the wine upon the mantelpiece.
