the question of going on the stage.

The former was very angry with her husband for allowing the visit to the
pantomime. Mr. Vergoe tried to take the blame, but Mrs. Raeburn was
determined the brunt of the storm should fall on Charlie. Jenny was
ordered to give up all ideas of the stage. Schooltime came round again,
and the would-be dancer behaved more atrociously than ever. She was the
despair of her mistresses, and at home she would sit by the fire
sulking. She began to grow thin, and her mother began to wonder whether,
after all, it would not be wiser to let her have her own way. She went
upstairs to consult Mr. Vergoe.

"You'll make a big mistake," he assured her, "if you keep her from what
she's set her heart on, so to speak. She has it in her, too. A proper
little dancer she'll make."

Mrs. Raeburn was still loath to give in. She had a dread of putting
temptation in the child's path. She did not know how to decide, while
Jenny continued to sulk, to be more and more unmanageable, to fret and
pine and grow thinner and thinner.

"Where could she go and learn this dancing?" the bewildered mother
asked.

"Madame Aldavini's," said the old clown. "That's where my granddaughter
learned."

It was a profession, after all, thought Mrs. Raeburn. What else would
Jenny do? Go into service? Somehow she could not picture her in a
parlormaid's cap and apron. Well, why not the stage, if it had got to
be? She discussed the project with her sister Mabel, who was horrified.

"A ballet-girl? Are you mad, Florence? Why, what a disgrace. Whatever
would Bill say? An actress? Better put her on the streets at once."

Mrs. Raeburn could not make up her mind.

"If any daughter of yours goes play-acting," went on Mrs. Purkiss, "I
can't allow her to come to tea with my Percy and my Claude any more, and
that's all about it."

"Jenny doesn't think going to tea with her cousins anything to wave
flags over."

"Pig-headed, that's what you are, Florence. All the years you've been a
sister of mine, I've known you for a pig-headed woman. It doesn't matter
whether you're ill or well, right or wrong, no one mustn't advise you.
That's how you come to marry Charlie."

The opposition of Mrs. Purkiss inclined her sister to give way before
Jenny's desire. It only needed a little more family interference, and
the child would be taken straight off to Madame Aldavini's School for
Dancing.

Miss Horner supplied it; for, two or three days after,