edge, the ability to distinguish a cow from a sheep, as
an opportunity to exhibit more satisfactory attainments she had
developed from the instigation of Miss Lilli Vergoe. Neither her mother
nor Ruby nor Alfie nor Edie nor anyone in the household had been a
perfect audience. Her schoolfellows, on the other hand, marveled with
delighted respect at her _pas seuls_ upon the asphalt playground of the
board school and clapped and jumped their praise.

Jenny had no idea of the stage at present. She had never yet been inside
a theater; and was still far from any conception of art as a profession.
It merely happened that she could dance, that dancing pleased her, and,
less important, that it made her popular with innumerable little girls
of her own age, and even older.

By some instinct of advisable concealment, she kept this habit of
publicity a secret from her family. Edie, to be sure, was aware of it,
and warned her once or twice of the immorality of showing off; but Edie
was too indolent to go into the matter more deeply and too conscious of
her own comparative greatness through seniority to spend much time in
the guardianship of a younger sister.

So for a year Jenny practiced and became daily more proficient, and
danced every morning to school.

Chapter V: _Pretty Apples in Eden_

Shortly after her eighth birthday Jenny was puzzled by an incident
which, with its uneasy suggestions, led her to postulate to herself for
the first time that mere escape from childhood did not finally solve the
problem of existence.

She had long been aware of the incomplete affection between her parents;
that is to say, she always regarded her father as something that seemed
like herself or a chair to be perpetually in her mother's way.

She had no feeling of awe towards Mr. Charles Raeburn, but rather looked
upon him as a more extensive counterpart of Alfie, both prone to many
deeds of mischief. She had no conception of her father as a
bread-winner; her mother was so plainly the head of the house.

In the early morning her father vanished to work and only came back just
before bedtime to eat a large tea, like Alfie, in the course of which he
was reprimanded and pushed about and ordered, like Alfie, to behave
himself. To be sure, he had liberty of egress at a later hour, for once,
when in the midst of nightly fears she had rushed in the last breath of
a dream along the landing to her mother's room, she saw him coming
rosily u