a whole music-hall program. To put everybody
at their ease, Lily told them to smoke, took a puff or two at a cigarette
herself--"Ugh! Ugh!"--almost choked....

They amused themselves, among themselves, free from any constraint due to
the presence of jossers. Lily joked with them as she used to do with the
apprentices in the mornings, when they showed one another their bruises of
the day before. She made them look at her pigeon's egg, on the side of her
foot, the little ball-shaped muscle special to her profession, like the
triceps of the pugilist or the dancing-girls' calves. She was vain enough
to put on a silk stocking, poked out her foot from under the bedclothes,
let them feel "her egg," made it jump under their fingers by a sudden
contraction.

"Is that all you've got to show us, darling?" asked the impersonator.

"You don't want much, I _don't_ think!" said Lily, pulling back her foot
under the quilt.

The incident was interrupted by new-comers who had also known Lily when
she was that high. They brought fresh news from Lisle Street. They had had
a drink with P. T. Clifton himself, had had a drink with an author who was
writing a book on the business.

"Another josser who's sure to talk a lot of nonsense!" cried Lily. "If
only they told the truth and described us as we are, a sight better than
the society ladies, who come and wait for pros outside the stage-door!"

And they went on. The healths they had drunk with this girl and that girl;
and new turns: competitors who were cropping up ... names ... names ...
Ave Maria? Dead, they said: somewhere in Ecuador or Peru.

Then Lily stretched herself to her full length in the sheets, feeling
weary, weary, crushed under all that talk.

And Trampy just didn't write, sent no money at all. She blushed for him
... in spite of her wish to catch him tripping, before witnesses. She was
ashamed to be his wife, his only wife, his little wife for ever.

On that day, as it happened, Jimmy came to pay her a visit. His engagement
at the Kolossal was ending. He was to perform at the London Hippodrome,
before going to the States. A certain air of respect surrounded him from
the moment he entered the room, that Jimmy who already stood higher than
any of them among the famous bill-toppers! And they gradually retired, as
though Lily would prefer that. It was no use her saying, "Do stay!" They
went all the same; and Lily was left alone with him, a little embarrassed
and yet flatt