e Dagoes, instead of starring in England!

Her wandering life continued; her journeys from town to town, in the
Spanish provinces, her arrival in the chill of the morning, her anxiety
about her salary, the hustle and bustle of departure and--trot, trot,
trot!--lugged about in the railway-carriage, like a performing dog in his
box.

And what theaters! It was worse than Germany or even Paris. In England, on
the Harrasford tour or the Bill and Boom, they had nice dressing-rooms,
with a carpet, water hot and cold, quick attendance, stairs swept every
day. Here, old plaster and those idiots who looked as if they understood
nothing--it took three of them to shift a scene--Dagoes who asked her
straight out, in Pidgin-English, if she was alone:

"No man viz you?"

It touched her on the raw. Lily lost all her cheerfulness: to begin with,
that engagement was not a particularly brilliant one; it was not at all
calculated to prompt her to do better, to introduce novelties into her
turn. Besides, on stages not yet overrun with Roofers or fat freaks, an
artiste performing by herself made an impression. Her old tricks sufficed;
sometimes she topped the bill:

"Theaters are the same everywhere; artistes the same everywhere, from New
York to Bilbao. Topping the bill in one means topping the bill in the
others ... doesn't it, Glass-Eye?"

But she knew quite well that it didn't; and, besides, that satisfaction of
her vanity put no money in her pocket. The amount she owed, my! She
thought of the past, of what she had earned for "them" since Mexico. If
she had only had half of it, a quarter, a quarter of a quarter, damn it!

Meantime, she had to make herself respected. In those countries, where
people used gestures when they spoke to you, a lady could not be too
careful. Why, the men treated an English girl just as they treated their
own women. She could have flung her bike at their heads! And they kept it
up all night, as in Russia, all except the jewels; you had to stay till
morning and were expected to accept invitations for supper, so as to keep
the customer there and push business! A little more and she would have had
to sleep there! She had threatened to tear up her contract, to complain to
the consul. And what annoyed her also was being in the same dressing-room
with singers who undressed without shame, while receiving their friends,
and made eyes at Lily worse than the impersonator.

And she had to have her food at the theat