"And, when you're in work, everybody wants you; and, when you're out of
work, they have nothing for you: it's help yourself as best you may!" she
said.

She had to help herself now; and it was delicate business dealing with
people who have only one idea in their heads, to swindle you, in order to
curry favor with the managers by getting them cheap turns. They would have
skinned you alive:

"Two pounds a week. Do you accept?"

"Go to Halifax!" Lily would reply in such cases, looking them straight in
the face. It took courage to do that: the agent might grow bigger, become
an enemy. She didn't care! She wasn't going to lower her price for
anybody! And the commission she had to pay them was a torment to Lily;
calculating the percentage made her head split--not to speak of the
complicated nature of the contracts, worse than insurance policies. The
poor artiste was bound down on every side, at the mercy of the manager;
everything was foreseen, down to the prohibition of black tights, which
concealed one's poverty. And it was bad enough in England; but in the Dago
countries, on the continent, it was worse.

"Can you understand a word of it, Glass-Eye?" asked Lily, explaining to
her maid the tricks which the artiste had to fight against. "I don't know
how the small turns manage," she concluded, in the tone of a woman who
towers above all that.

Lily's prettiness made the people in the street turn round to look at her.
They would gaze at her cheeky feather, whisper, "You pretty, pretty
darling!" in her ear. Lily, secretly delighted, held herself ready to
crush the saucy rascal with a "How dare you?" like a lady who knows how to
appreciate a compliment, without permitting the least familiarity. And
when she approached the agency, she insisted on Glass-Eye's keeping by her
side, asked for things: her wrist-bag, her embroidered handkerchief. And
her way of walking in! Lily pretended to be short-sighted, so as to see no
one in the rotten lot. She sent in her card, sat down in the waiting-room.
It reminded her of the dentist's, with those pale people sitting on
benches; those serio-comics, all over-fat; loud-voiced topical singers,
who took the place of the real artistes, just like the bioscopes and
cinematographs! There were also little families--small turns that had
struggled hard to learn a few tricks--nobody wanted them, because they had
no "chic" costumes, sometimes, or no lithos....

Those were received like dogs: a w