Pa would have covered his Lily with diamonds, if he had the money ... and if Ma had allowed it! But, on this special point, she ventured to oppose him. She had been Lily’s age herself, had Ma, and she enlarged upon the necessity of keeping a tight rein on Lily.

Ma enumerated the fugitives: Ave Maria, and this one, and that one, and ever so many others who had bolted; and troupes ruined by the flight,—or the marriage,—of the star....

“Lily has changed a good deal lately, dear, are you sure she hasn’t a man in her mind?”

“There we are again!” said Pa. “Always the same old story! But just tell me, who does she see? Who does she know? Jimmy? You don’t mean him, I suppose? Very well! Trampy, then? A married man, divorced, married again, goodness knows what! and then ... and then ... Oh, well, let’s have peace at home, at any rate! Damn it, Lily may be a bit of a flirt: why shouldn’t she be, a pretty girl like that? Beauty, in the profession, is half the battle.”

And Pa entered into details, comforted Ma with good news: a fresh contract signed with Bill and Boom, after that, the Harrasford tour: big salaries now....

“No, dear, this isn’t the time to worry Lily about trifles. And I don’t want her to be bothered with useless work, either.”

“Call home work useless! A woman’s greatest charm!” exclaimed Ma.

Lily was a subject of friendly discussion to them. Both adored her equally: both were proud of her at heart. For Lily was growing very beautiful; everybody said so at the theater: the stage-manager; the acting manager, down to Jimmy, who stammered things. It was an endless series of compliments; Harrasford’s friend, the architect, who had not seen her for a long time, fell into raptures when he met her on the stage:

“Magneeficent!” he exclaimed, in his Franco-Belgian accent. “How old is she: sixteen? seventeen?”

“Fourteen,” said Ma, with a mincing air, for to that damned “parley-voo” she was as anxious to make Lily out a child now, in order to keep a firmer hold of her, as she had been to increase her age in America, so as to make her work.

“What, fourteen, Ma!” protested Lily.

“Yes, fourteen, of course; do you think you know better than your mother, you little fool? Can’t you see everybody’s laughing at you?”

Ma dreaded those irresponsible jossers, who filled Lily’s head with a pack of false notions, and kept a good watch, in her growing anxiety.

Ma, in the early days of their arrival in London, had been terribly obsessed by the dread of being left without means in the huge city. Lily had got them out of that difficulty. And now she was earning such a lot of money: one day, who knows, they would have made enough to assure their independence for good and all! When she thought of this possibility, Ma’s eyes lit up with yellow gleams; she felt like catching hold of Lily and locking her up in a safe.

Pa was less eager for gain, less ant-like in his economies; he was an artiste, above all; he knew how to make allowances; there was a time for work and a time for play. He often treated himself to the pleasure of taking Lily out; and, each time, as usual, she got a nice little present—he liked to pass for a Pa who spoiled his daughter, loved to hear himself so described, and took a wicked delight in repeating it all to Mrs. Clifton.

Lily was the gainer by the difference in opinion; she felt herself a little freer. When she went out in the morning, she considered herself at liberty to walk less fast, and no longer trembled on returning. She loved to loiter in the Tottenham Court Road; her little person assumed an air of importance; if, after practice, some artiste passed her in the street and gave her a smile, she believed that he was waiting for her; a “comic quartet,” the Out-of-Tune Musicals, happening to come out of a bar and blow a kiss to her, were there on her account, she thought—four lovers at a swoop!

It was almost impossible that she should not meet Trampy, who was always prowling about from bar to bar, between Oxford Street and Leicester Square. She did meet him, in fact. Trampy, that day, wore a felt hat, a blue suit, a red tie, with a sixpenny Murias cocked in the corner of his mouth, and he greeted her with a triumphant “Hullo, peach!” as she passed. Lily was quite excited, stopped just long enough to refuse a drink and then left him very quickly. She was afraid it showed on her face, when she got home, and his words still rang in her ears, that she was awfully pretty, the prettiest girl on the stage, a peach, a duck, a pearl, a daisy, a bird.

All that she had seen and heard in her jostled existence, now came back to her, grew and sprouted in her ... now that Lily was being made love to by gentlemen, not the monkey-faces or the blue-chins, but men like Trampy, her craving for admiration oozed out of her at every pore....

Trampy! Lily did not care for Trampy; but she thought him amiable, polite with the girls.... She was grateful to him for being there to say pretty things to her when she passed. She preferred that type to men like Jimmy, for instance, savages who always seemed on the point of speaking and never opened their mouths; with them, she thought, a wife would be bored to death. Besides, Jimmy, pooh, a common workman, a josser! While Trampy was an artiste, a bill-topper and rich, no doubt. You had only to listen to Trampy to see that he was very well off! Chocolates, sweets, jewelry, ostrich-feathers, patent-leather boots, everything! He would have loaded her with presents, if she had let him, but she had never accepted anything except a little gold ring, which she hid in her pocket when she came in, for, if Ma had caught sight of it, gee, what a smacking!

Trampy often met her; he seemed almost to do so on purpose; he found pretty speeches, compliments which he had already uttered a score of times to ever so many girls, on ever so many stages, like a real Don Juan who had been all over the world and everywhere picked up love-speeches and jokes to “fetch” the ladies with. He tickled her vanity, told her that a dear little girl like her was cut out for dress, that a big hat with ostrich feathers would go well with her fair hair and that men, by Jove, ought to go on their knees whenever they spoke to her!

All this hummed and buzzed in her head. At night, when she fell asleep in Maud’s arms, she dreamed of big hats and fine dresses and referred to it during the day. Pa hardly knew what to think; if she did as well as last night—three encores—Lily could have half a sovereign, to buy a new hat in the Tottenham Court Road with, said Pa.

“Oh, Pa, I shall do all right, you’ll see. Will you be very nice? Then get me that one at two guineas, you know, in Regent Street.”

“But you’re mad, Lily!” said Pa, without attaching too much importance to it, for he had other cares: agents to see, letters to write, business, damn it!

That took down Lily’s cheek a bit; but her luxurious ideas returned, nevertheless. For instance, from admiring the Three Graces or the Gilson girl, who looked like Venuses in their silk tights and whose entrance on the stage caused every opera-glass to glint upon them, the wish to appear in tights began to grow on Lily. Oh, not the plain tights of living statues; no, but with flowers and leaves embroidered here and there and jet braid laced about the right arm. She was tired of bloomers and told Pa so, straight out, when the apprentices had left the room and Pa, stretched in his easy-chair, seemed in a good temper. Pa thought this notion about tights, silly:

“They’re very nice, those bloomers; those little shirts. Ask your mother.”

“Oh, yes,” said Ma sarcastically, “but bloomers are made at home, in the afternoon; you have to stitch them yourself, dear. Tights, which you buy ready-made and which cost just ten times as much and last only half as long, are much more convenient, aren’t they, Lily? To say nothing of the absurdity of an ugly girl like you showing yourself in tights!”

“And the troupe,” said Pa. “What would the troupe look like? Might as well not have a troupe; there’d be no one but you!”

“Well, what harm would that do? I am the troupe!” said Lily, tossing her obstinate forehead. “And all the money you give them you could give me!”

“Lily,” said Pa, alarmed, “you deserve to be smacked for that!”

“Oh, Pa, what an idea!” said Lily, who was just arranging her fringe before the glass. “A Pa to beat his Lily for a little thing like that, away from work!” And, darting a bright smile at Pa, “You never would, Pa, would you?” she ventured.

Clifton, taken aback, looked at his Lily, as if to say that she was right, damn it! But Ma, in her fury, cried:

“Wait a bit! You shall see if I would!”

Bang! A box on the ears, followed by an order to go to her room, on dry bread and water, impudence! And practise her banjo till the evening!

The blow itself was nothing, but what an humiliation for Lily, who, only yesterday, had been told that she had the sweetest nose in the world, cheeks to cover with kisses, eyes, lovely eyes: there wasn’t a girl in a hundred with eyes like that, by Jove! And those lovely eyes were only fit to cry with! And those pretty cheeks Ma had covered with smacks! When she thought of it, she felt inclined to kick over the traces. Did they think her such a kid, then, her Pa and Ma? She’d show Ma if she was fourteen! She’d be off like the others. Lily, at this idea, felt her heart come into her mouth: no, no; she would never dare; she never would. She swore it to herself; took the great oath of the stage: three fingers of her right hand uplifted, the left hand on her lucky charm. And yet, one day, she would marry. She didn’t lack chances, if she wanted them. And a gentleman, too! And her Pa and Ma, to disgust her, of course, pretended that he was married! They must take her for an idiot: how could Trampy be married, considering that he had suggested ... suggested different things to her?...

Lily brooded like this, reviewing the tiny events of which her life was made up. Then a gleam of sunshine came to change her thoughts. She amused herself by breathing on the window-pane, making a circle ... wrote a name with her finger and quickly licked it out with her tongue ... and Lily brooded ... brooded....

But Ma’s voice made her jump:

“What are you doing there, you good-for-nothing? I told you to take your banjo!”

“Yes, Ma,” Lily replied mechanically, with her nose glued to the window.

“Do you hear, Mr. Clifton?” said Ma furiously. “That’s the way she obeys!”

Mrs. Clifton had no doubt whatever that there was a man at the bottom of it ... a flirtation ... something or other. It was useless for Ma to provide for everything, to do her best to oppose Mr. Clifton’s weakness. There was Lily now, taking up an independent attitude. She thought herself pretty, no doubt; some booby must have been stuffing her up, making love to her, to laugh at her later on! If she, Mrs. Clifton, had been a man, she would certainly never look at that ill-mannered baggage; but the London jossers liked that brazen type! And to think that time was passing ... passing!... Oh, Ma would have liked to get hold of the man who invented the law about girls coming of age ... and love ... and marriage! A fierce jealousy seized upon her at the thought. Lily would have bouquets, champagne suppers; Lily would be loved by gentlemen! Tell Lily that she was pretty and, in less than six months the little hussy would think herself a fine lady! And, on that day, Mrs. Clifton would wash her hands of her!

These continued attacks ended by shaking Pa. He didn’t quite know what to say; there was a certain amount of truth in it:

“But,” he persisted, “why should she go? She has everything she wants here?”

But he was more and more annoyed; yes, he admitted, he was wrong to laugh at Mr. Fuchs: you must never set children a bad example. And, from that moment, once his attention had been called to the matter, he daily discovered fresh causes for uneasiness: where the devil did she get that love of dress from? And who sent her that bouquet behind the scenes the other night? Why, Lily wanted to have it handed to her across the footlights, like a singer!

And Pa and Ma watched Lily like a bag of money on which one keeps one’s hand, for fear of pickpockets. Ma doubled her precautions.

The gentlemen in the front boxes, especially, alarmed her, even more than the Jim Crows: creatures apart, devilish creatures, the gentlemen in the front boxes! She fancied she saw a reflection of hell in the eye-glass of every one of them. If ever Lily dared to smile to them, she knew what awaited her! Ma would get angry for nothing at all; she even scolded Lily for allowing herself to be approached on the stage by a contributor to The Piccadilly Magazine, which was publishing articles on The Little Favorites of the Public.

“I am sure you only told him a lot of nonsense,” said Ma. “A girl should call her mother in a case like that. What have you to do with the public? Aren’t you ashamed?”

No, Lily was not ashamed. She was exasperated rather. And she had not told the journalist any lies: just the plain truth, in her own little way. Sweat and blood! Broken legs! Broken arms! And here, there, there, all over her body, scars deep enough to put your finger in! That would revenge her a bit for the way in which she was treated. She knew that, when the article appeared, she would catch it at Pa’s hands; but never mind! She had told everything, everything, in revenge; just as she might have flung her bike at their heads in a fit of anger!