nt or of suddenly
being called upon to play a noticeable part, though that pleasure grew
more and more insipid all the time. There was, however, still a certain
agreeable reflection in the consciousness of looking pretty and knowing
that a few eyes every night remarked her face and figure. And even if
all these consolations of theatrical existence failed, there was a very
great satisfaction in making up and leaving, as it were, one's own
discontented body behind.

For a time everything went on as usual and nobody put forward any
definite proposal involving a change either of residence or mode of
life. Jenny began to think she was doomed to settle down into perpetual
dullness and never again to be launched desperately on a passionate
adventure. She was beginning to be aware how easy it was for a woman to
belie the temperament of her youth with a common-place maturity. By the
end of the summer their father had already advanced so far on the road
to moral and financial disintegration as to make it evident to Jenny and
May that they must fend for themselves. One lodger, an old clerk in a
Moorgate firm of solicitors, had already left, and the other, a
Cornishman working in a dairy, would soon be carrying the result of his
commercial experience back to his native land. Neither of the girls
liked the prospect of new lodgers and were nervous of affording shelter
to possible thieves or murderers. Nor did May in particular enjoy the
supervision of the servant or wrestling with the slabs of unbaked dough
which heralded her culinary essays. So at last she and Jenny decided the
house was altogether too large and that they must give notice to quit.

"And aren't I to give no opinion on the subject of my own house?" asked
their father indignantly.

"You?" cried Jenny; "why should you? You don't do nothing but drink
everything away. Why should we slave ourselves to the death keeping
you?"

"There's daughters!" Charlie apostrophized. "Yes, daughters is all very
nice when they're small, but when they grow up, they're worse than
wives. It comes of being women, I suppose." And Charlie, as if
sympathizing with his earliest ancestor, sighed for Eden. "Look here, I
don't want to take my hook from this house."

"All right, stay on, then, stupid," May advised; "only Jenny and I are
going to clear off."

"Stay on by yourself," Jenny continued in support of her sister, "and a
fine house it'll be in a year's time. No one able to get in for e