id her mother. "There'll always
be plenty of theaters."

Jenny became desperate. Her dreams of a glorious freedom were fading.
That night she took to bed with her a knife.

"What are you doing with that knife?" said May.

"I'm going to kill myself," said Jenny.

Pale as a witch, she sat on the edge of the bed. White was her face as
a countenance seen in a looking-glass at dawn. Her lips were closed; her
eyes burned.

May shrieked.

"Mother--dad--come quick: Jenny's going to kill herself with the
carving-knife."

Mrs. Raeburn rushed into the room and saw the child with the blade
against her throat. She snatched away the knife.

"Whatever was you going to do?"

"I want to go to Glasgow," said Jenny; "and I'll kill myself if I
don't."

"I'll give you 'kill yourself,'" cried Mrs. Raeburn, slapping her
daughter's cheeks so that a crimson mark burned on its dead paleness.

"Well, I will," said Jenny.

"We'll see about it," said Mrs. Raeburn. Jenny knew she had won; and
deserved victory, for she had meant what she said. Her mother was
greatly perplexed. Who would look after Jenny?

Madame Aldavini explained that there would be three other girls, that
they would all live together, that she herself would see them all
established, as she had to go north herself to give the final touches to
the ballet which she was producing; that no harm would come to Jenny;
that she would really be more strictly looked after than she was at
home.

"That's quite impossible," said Mrs. Raeburn.

Madame smiled sardonically.

"However," Mrs. Raeburn went on, "I suppose she's got to make a start
some time. So let her go."

Now followed an interlude from toe-dancing--an interlude which Jenny
enjoyed, although once she nearly strained herself doing the "strides."
But acrobatic dancing came very easily to her, and progress was much
more easily discernible than in the long and tiresome education for the
ballet.

Of the other three girls who were to make up the Aldavini Quartette,
only one was still at the school. She was a plump girl called Eileen
Vaughan, three years older than Jenny, prim and, in the latter's
opinion, "very stuck up." Jenny hoped that the other two would be more
fun than Eileen. Eileen was a pig, although she liked her name.

Great problems arose in Hagworth Street out of Jenny's embarkation upon
the ship of life. So long as she had been merely a pupil of Madame
Aldavini's, family opposition to her choice of