She was stranded in Saigon with precious little money and in great trouble about a kid she had, a boy of five or six.
"A fellow I just remember, whom they called Pearler Harry, brought her out first into these parts--from Australia, I believe.

He brought her out and then dropped her, and she remained knocking about here and there, known to most of us by sight, at any rate.

Everybody in the Archipelago had heard of Laughing Anne.

She had really a pleasant silvery laugh always at her disposal, so to speak, but it wasn't enough apparently to make her fortune.

The poor creature was ready to stick to any half-decent man if he would only let her, but she always got dropped, as it might have been expected.
"She had been left in Saigon by the skipper of a German ship with whom she had been going up and down the China coast as far as Vladivostok for near upon two years.