immediately upon her worries, made the thousand and one vexations of a day
like this easier for her to bear. The compliments which caught her ear in
the street comforted her too:

"You pretty, pretty ..."

But she had no time to listen. Six months in her book before night! As
time passed, Lily would have been content with less. And trot, trot, trot:
while she was at it; then she would end by seeing whether they would get
her for a handful of rice.

This idea amused her. Lily had confidence in her talent and continued her
visits. She saw them all: other agents, former bosses or profs, who had
sucked apprentices dry to the marrow and who continued their evil
practices in their offices; this sort sized you up with the eye of a
slave-dealer. There was also the lucky agent, who had started a
sensational attraction, a Laurence or a Light of Asia. This agent had a
touch of pride about him, with his eternal, "I gave her her first start!"
as though to say:

"They'll never find another like her, never! They don't turn them out like
that now!"

And all this was a pretext for offering you ridiculous terms, because you
were neither Light of Asia nor Laurence. It was no use Lily's boasting of
having declined Bill and Boom and Harrasford, pretending to be an artiste
for whom the managers were competing against one another with sheaves of
banknotes. There was nothing for her at this one's ... nothing for her at
the others', either ... only a scrap of news of her family, through an
artiste. The New Trickers were all the rage in Scotland, it seemed; an
engagement in London, at the Palace, was waiting for them. When Lily heard
that, she turned pale with envy: so it was on their account that she had
been refused that tour in England, so that they might have it! Patience!
Her

[Illustration: LILY]

day would come ... when she returned from the continent and, instead of
Miss, called herself Mlle., like Adeline Genee and lots of others!
Meanwhile, she had found nothing. Still, Lily knew that one sometimes had
whole months of enforced idleness, without knowing the reason, and then,
suddenly, one's luck returned. One only has to wait a bit, thought Lily,
making herself very short-sighted as she passed before the arcade, the
haunt of the out-at-elbow pros and of the piffling little agents, the
jackals of the profession, on the lookout for a bone to gnaw. And it was
not a little vexing to hear her name pass from mouth to mouth--"Mrs.
Tr