"If I offered it, he'd take it. Baby or no." Susan's voice is sharp, defensive. She's no longer crying, but that doesn't mean the wound she uncovered for this game is any less raw, or that it stings any less to be told it was for nothing. We ain't all happy to be wanted, 'Ponine. We ain't all happy to give ourselves up to some brute with a knife, or spread our legs for anyone that passes. Even a gilly's got dignity.

It's a cruel thought, and an unfair one, and she bites it back with an effort, even as she opens her mouth to snap it at the other girl. She's as bad as her aunt, sometimes, she thinks: sharp-tongued, bitter, cruel. She won't let that be who she is here, won't turn into one of the girls who laughed behind their hands at the mayor's whore. She refuses.

Instead, she leans in to look into the bag, wrinkling her nose in unconscious mimicry of 'Ponine. "I dunno," she says, after a moment. "Naught I've ever seen before. Let me look?"