rcle ... wrote a name
with her finger and quickly licked it out with her tongue ... and Lily
brooded ... brooded....

But Ma's voice made her jump:

"What are you doing there, you good-for-nothing? I told you to take your
banjo!"

"Yes, Ma," Lily replied mechanically, with her nose glued to the window.

"Do you hear, Mr. Clifton?" said Ma furiously. "That's the way she
obeys!"

Mrs. Clifton had no doubt whatever that there was a man at the bottom of
it ... a flirtation ... something or other. It was useless for Ma to
provide for everything, to do her best to oppose Mr. Clifton's weakness.
There was Lily now, taking up an independent attitude. She thought herself
pretty, no doubt; some booby must have been stuffing her up, making love
to her, to laugh at her later on! If she, Mrs. Clifton, had been a man,
she would certainly never look at that ill-mannered baggage; but the
London jossers liked that brazen type! And to think that time was passing
... passing!... Oh, Ma would have liked to get hold of the man who
invented the law about girls coming of age ... and love ... and marriage!
A fierce jealousy seized upon her at the thought. Lily would have
bouquets, champagne suppers; Lily would be loved by gentlemen! Tell Lily
that she was pretty and, in less than six months the little hussy would
think herself a fine lady! And, on that day, Mrs. Clifton would wash her
hands of her!

These continued attacks ended by shaking Pa. He didn't quite know what to
say; there was a certain amount of truth in it:

"But," he persisted, "why should she go? She has everything she wants
here?"

But he was more and more annoyed; yes, he admitted, he was wrong to laugh
at Mr. Fuchs: you must never set children a bad example. And, from that
moment, once his attention had been called to the matter, he daily
discovered fresh causes for uneasiness: where the devil did she get that
love of dress from? And who sent her that bouquet behind the scenes the
other night? Why, Lily wanted to have it handed to her across the
footlights, like a singer!

And Pa and Ma watched Lily like a bag of money on which one keeps one's
hand, for fear of pickpockets. Ma doubled her precautions.

The gentlemen in the front boxes, especially, alarmed her, even more than
the Jim Crows: creatures apart, devilish creatures, the gentlemen in the
front boxes! She fancied she saw a reflection of hell in the eye-glass of
every one of them. If ever Lily dared to smil