n's sake?"

"The lodger."

"Mr. Vergoe?"

Jenny nodded.

"I may wear it, mayn't I, mother?"

"Yes, I suppose so," said Mrs. Raeburn grudgingly. "But don't get
putting it in your mouth."

"There's a Miss Vain," said Ruby.

"I'm not."

"Peacocks like looking-glasses," nagged Ruby.

"I isn't a peacock. I's a queen."

"There's a sauce! Whoever heard?" commented Ruby.

The clown's sentimental and pleasantly rhetorical descriptions had no
direct influence on the child's mind. But when his granddaughter, Miss
Lilli Vergoe, all chiffon and ostrich plumes, took her upon a _peau de
soie_ lap, and clasped her rosy cheeks to a frangipani breast, Jenny
thought she had never experienced any sensation half so delicious.

Amid the heavy glooms and fusty smells of the old house in Hagworth
Street, Miss Lilli Vergoe blossomed like an exotic flower, or rather, in
Jenny's own simile, like lather. Her china-blue eyes were amazingly
attractive. Her honey-colored hair and Dresden cheeks fascinated the
impressionable child with all the wonder of an expensive doll. There was
no part of her that was not soft and beautiful to stroke. She woke in
Jenny a cooing affection such as had never been by her bestowed upon a
living soul.

Moreover, what Mr. Vergoe talked about, Lilli showed her how to achieve;
so that, unknown to Mrs. Raeburn, Jenny slowly acquired that ambition
for public appreciation which makes the actress. Terpischore herself,
carrying credentials from Apollo, would not have been a more powerful
mistress than Lilli Vergoe, a second line girl in the _Corps de Ballet_
of the Orient Palace of Varieties. Under her tuition Jenny learned a
hundred airs and graces, which, when re-enacted in the kitchen of Number
Seventeen, either caused a command to cease fidgeting or an invitation
to look at the comical child.

She learned, too, more than mere airs and graces. She was grounded very
thoroughly in primary technique, so that, as time went on, she could
step passably well upon her toes and achieve the "splits" and "strides"
and "handsprings" of a more acrobatic mode.

Therefore, though in the September just before her seventh birthday
Mrs. Raeburn decided it was time to begin Jenny's education, it is very
obvious that Jenny's education was really begun on the sunlit morning
when Mr. Vergoe saw her dancing to a sugared melody from "Cavalleria."

School, however, meant for Jenny not so much the acquirement of
elementary knowl