-all of them, if once he put his back to it!--a new turn, a
discovery that would show what he was made of! Meanwhile he had a new
idea, as a sketch comedian, with a make-up of his own invention, the face
painted white on one side and red on the other, with wrinkles cunningly
drawn--a laughing Johnny and a crying Johnny, two men in one. He pestered
Lily with his plans, made her cut out dresses for him, came back from the
old-clothes shop laden with uniforms in rags, into which Lily had to put
patches. And shoes, in particular, ran in his head; shoes of which the
soles and the uppers yawned like lips; talking shoes, which said, "Papa!"
and "Mamma!" This last suggestion made Lily laugh.

Trampy haunted the bazaars, bought children's toys, took the stomachs out
of the cardboard dogs and rabbits to make his quackers, sought about for
his right note, pursued inspiration to the bottom of the glasses.

Lily was sometimes driven to exasperation. This tramp-cyclist, this
sketch-comedian was making her, Lily Clifton, patch up his dresses! And
her husband rewarded her for it by making love to the girls, poor idiot!
Oh, if Pa and Ma had not been so harsh with her! Lily always harked back
to that, stiffened herself with the thought, remembered the Marjutti girl,
in whom love of art produced wonders and whose Pa and Ma were so gentle
and kind.

"They should have treated me like that," she concluded, "and I should have
been at home still!"

She regretted her marriage. And there were some who pitied her for
belonging to Trampy: they looked upon him as not worthy of her, blamed him
for openly carrying on with girls. Others asked, as though it did not
matter, was she really married or were they just "living together?"

"What? Am I married? Is that what they think about me?" she said, a little
annoyed. "Of course I am! At the Kennington registry-office!"

And yet a doubt entered her mind too. Was she really married, after all?
Lily did not know much about it. Had the banns been published? And those
two witnesses picked up in the street ... a ceremony that took just five
minutes ... like a conjuring trick. If it was true that they were "living
together" without her knowing it, she would not stay with him. She would
go back home at once. Marriage, certainly, was never intended for her.
This she realized now. When she thought of the Gilson girl, mad on her
man, and of others whom she sometimes caught in the dressing-rooms and
passages ea