e, and
ever so many others who had bolted; and troupes ruined by the flight,--or
the marriage,--of the star....

"Lily has changed a good deal lately, dear, are you sure she hasn't a man
in her mind?"

"There we are again!" said Pa. "Always the same old story! But just tell
me, who does she see? Who does she know? Jimmy? You don't mean him, I
suppose? Very well! Trampy, then? A married man, divorced, married again,
goodness knows what! and then ... and then ... Oh, well, let's have peace
at home, at any rate! Damn it, Lily may be a bit of a flirt: why shouldn't
she be, a pretty girl like that? Beauty, in the profession, is half the
battle."

And Pa entered into details, comforted Ma with good news: a fresh contract
signed with Bill and Boom, after that, the Harrasford tour: big salaries
now....

"No, dear, this isn't the time to worry Lily about trifles. And I don't
want her to be bothered with useless work, either."

"Call home work useless! A woman's greatest charm!" exclaimed Ma.

Lily was a subject of friendly discussion to them. Both adored her
equally: both were proud of her at heart. For Lily was growing very
beautiful; everybody said so at the theater: the stage-manager; the acting
manager, down to Jimmy, who stammered things. It was an endless series of
compliments; Harrasford's friend, the architect, who had not seen her for
a long time, fell into raptures when he met her on the stage:

"Magneeficent!" he exclaimed, in his Franco-Belgian accent. "How old is
she: sixteen? seventeen?"

"Fourteen," said Ma, with a mincing air, for to that damned "parley-voo"
she was as anxious to make Lily out a child now, in order to keep a firmer
hold of her, as she had been to increase her age in America, so as to make
her work.

"What, fourteen, Ma!" protested Lily.

"Yes, fourteen, of course; do you think you know better than your mother,
you little fool? Can't you see everybody's laughing at you?"

Ma dreaded those irresponsible jossers, who filled Lily's head with a pack
of false notions, and kept a good watch, in her growing anxiety.

Ma, in the early days of their arrival in London, had been terribly
obsessed by the dread of being left without means in the huge city. Lily
had got them out of that difficulty. And now she was earning such a lot of
money: one day, who knows, they would have made enough to assure their
independence for good and all! When she thought of this possibility, Ma's
eyes lit up with y