ly was under age; just as at
'Frisco. What! Why? Because of former scandals, it appeared: Martello and
Ave Maria. What had he, a British subject, to do with those Dagoes who
spoil the profession? growled Pa. He ended by rebelling against the
injustice of it, thought of the Three Graces hard at work rehearsing under
Nunkie's eye, while he, Clifton, had not even the right to set foot on a
stage and let Lily practise there. To work, to work, damn it! And he
locked her up all day in her room doing her balancings, the boomerang on
the front wheel, the standstill on the back-wheel, or the bike upside
down, with Lily standing on the pedals, like a convict on the tread-mill.
The pack of fools! Because a Dago had whipped his sister, wasn't a Pa to
have the right to bring his own daughter up? To work, to work! And he kept
her at it for hours and hours, watched and knit his brows, like a sage
pondering for hours over the solution of a problem.

Lily, breathless, would turn a look of entreaty upon her Ma, but Mrs.
Clifton, with her nose bent over her work, pretended not to see,
obstinately went on cutting out, patching, sewing her tomboy's bloomers.
Lily longed for Trampy....

At night, Pa ran from theater to theater: from Fourteenth Street, where
they lodged, to Twenty-third Street; took the elevated to Fifty-eighth
Street, to Hundred and-twenty-fifth Street! All theaters at which Lily
would have triumphed but for those dirty Dagoes! And the things that were
served up to the public, pooh! Clifton laughed with scorn. Troupes of
English dancing-girls--the famous Roofers--with movements like stuffed
dolls; and cyclists, pooh! Hauptmanns, fat freaks turned out in Berlin: if
that was the best they could do, pooh! Oh, if he had only had the right to
send his New Zealander on Wheels scooting in among their legs, just to
show the public what a star really was! And all the morning he ran about
the town talking of "childish tricks--a big girl" to the police and
"wonderful tricks--the only girl of her age who can do them" to the agents
in the St. James' Building. Oh, if he could have London! He longed to
measure his strength against all those famous names--Marjutti, Laurence,
the Pawnees--just to show them his Lily!

* * * * *

And now it was the last stage. All around stretched the dark sea; and the
liner sped--thud, thud, thud--through a gloomy set. Three days more and
then Liverpool; and Lond