ellow gleams; she felt like catching hold of Lily and
locking her up in a safe.

Pa was less eager for gain, less ant-like in his economies; he was an
artiste, above all; he knew how to make allowances; there was a time for
work and a time for play. He often treated himself to the pleasure of
taking Lily out; and, each time, as usual, she got a nice little
present--he liked to pass for a Pa who spoiled his daughter, loved to hear
himself so described, and took a wicked delight in repeating it all to
Mrs. Clifton.

Lily was the gainer by the difference in opinion; she felt herself a
little freer. When she went out in the morning, she considered herself at
liberty to walk less fast, and no longer trembled on returning. She loved
to loiter in the Tottenham Court Road; her little person assumed an air of
importance; if, after practice, some artiste passed her in the street and
gave her a smile, she believed that he was waiting for her; a "comic
quartet," the Out-of-Tune Musicals, happening to come out of a bar and
blow a kiss to her, were there on her account, she thought--four lovers at
a swoop!

It was almost impossible that she should not meet Trampy, who was always
prowling about from bar to bar, between Oxford Street and Leicester
Square. She did meet him, in fact. Trampy, that day, wore a felt hat, a
blue suit, a red tie, with a sixpenny Murias cocked in the corner of his
mouth, and he greeted her with a triumphant "Hullo, peach!" as she passed.
Lily was quite excited, stopped just long enough to refuse a drink and
then left him very quickly. She was afraid it showed on her face, when she
got home, and his words still rang in her ears, that she was awfully
pretty, the prettiest girl on the stage, a peach, a duck, a pearl, a
daisy, a bird.

All that she had seen and heard in her jostled existence, now came back to
her, grew and sprouted in her ... now that Lily was being made love to by
gentlemen, not the monkey-faces or the blue-chins, but men like Trampy,
her craving for admiration oozed out of her at every pore....

Trampy! Lily did not care for Trampy; but she thought him amiable, polite
with the girls.... She was grateful to him for being there to say pretty
things to her when she passed. She preferred that type to men like Jimmy,
for instance, savages who always seemed on the point of speaking and never
opened their mouths; with them, she thought, a wife would be bored to
death. Besides, Jimmy, pooh, a commo