igarette._] Isn't it _chic_!

FARNCOMBE.

[_Producing his cigarette case and exchanging her cigarette for one of
his own._] I'll never smoke _that_.

LILY.

[_Pushing the match-stand towards him._] _Stoo_pid! Now, attend to me.
What do you say to a tiny provision shop in Kennington, over the
water?

FARNCOMBE.

Was that----?

LILY.

[_Nodding._] H'm; that was my start in the world. Father kept a small
shop in Kennington-- Gladwin Street, near the Oval. We sold groceries,
and butter and eggs and cheese, and pickled-pork and paraffin. I was
born there-- on the second floor; and in Gladwin Street I lived till I
was fourteen. Then father smashed, through the Stores cutting into our
little trade. Well, hardly smashed; that's too imposing. The business
just faded, and one morning we didn't bother to take the shutters
down. Then, after a while, father got a starvation berth-- eighteen
shillings a week!-- at a wholesale bacon warehouse-- Price and
Moseley's-- still over the water; and I earned an extra five at a
place in the Westminster Bridge Road, for pasting the gilt edges on to
passe-partouts from nine a.m. till six in the evening.

FARNCOMBE.

[_His head bowed again._] Great heavens!

LILY.

Not a syllable against the passe-partouts! They were the making of me.
It was the passe-partouts that brought me and Tedder together.

FARNCOMBE.

Who?

LILY.

Tedder. In the house where I worked, a man of the name of Tedder--
Ambrose Tedder-- taught dancing-- stage dancing-- "Tedder's Academy of
Saltatory Art"-- and every time I passed Tedder's door, and heard his
violin or piano, and the sound of the pupils' feet, I--! [_Breaking
off and throwing herself back._] Oh, lor', if once I----!

FARNCOMBE.

Go on; go on.

LILY.

Well, ultimately Tedder took me and trained me-- did it for nix-- for
what he hoped to get out of me in the future. Ah, and he _hasn't_ lost
over me-- poor old Ambrose! He collared a third of my salary for ever
so long; and now that the old chap's rheumaticky and worn out, I-- oh,
it's not worth mentioning. [_Jumping up and walking away._] My stars,
he could teach, could Tedder! I began by going to him for the last
twenty minutes of my dinner-hour. He wanted to stop _that_, because it
was bad for me, he said, to practise on a full-- a full--! Ha, ha, ha!
On a _full_--! [_Behind the table, resting her two hands upon it and
shaking with laughter._] Ho, ho, ho! As if I ever had-- in those