as quieter, now that she could practise. And Lily, also, was delighted
and relieved. At first it was jolly, doing nothing; but to be always at
home with Ma had its drawbacks; only the other day, because she had asked
for a tam-o'-shanter with a feather in it, like those she saw the little
girls wear in the street, she had nearly had a box on the ear, the
extravagant little beast, who would bring them all to the workhouse!

Better biking with Pa, from morning till night, and only coming home after
the show. Besides, away from the work, Pa was nice to her: a packet of
sweets here, a bunch of violets there; and then there were the train
journeys out of London and back, over the roofs: all those little yellow
houses, with white curtains, and those little back yards, no bigger than
that--real dolls' houses, all alike--and such lots of little chimneys,
such lots and lots of little chimneys; and those gorgeous posters:
Hippodrome, Olympia, Bovril, mustard, elephants, the Hauptmanns. Pa
wouldn't look at them, those fat freaks; but, oh, if he had them here--and
a whip--just for five minutes ... and the chance of saying a word or two!
To think that they were working at the Castle, while he was puffing out to
the suburbs! And he racked his brain, as he traveled over the town--that
town which he had to conquer and which was veiled from him between-whiles
by the curtain of posters in the railway-stations, on the hoardings,
everywhere--again, again; and imperial troupes and royal troupes, endless
troupes, arrays of pink tights, lines of legs uplifted amid a flight of
scarlet skirts, alternating with Sunlight and Van Houten and national and
colonial troupes, loud as a trumpet-blare and with nothing behind them, he
dared say....

Those "troupes," those "families"--he turned it all over in his mind--yes,
they judged talent by weight; the public wanted a lot for its money: well,
why shouldn't he have a troupe? Why not? Lily--he had noticed it in the
few shows she had given--Lily didn't cut much of a figure in London: five
stone of flesh and bones, a mite, a minnow, a nothing. Well, if Lily
wasn't enough by herself, he'd give them more: a whole troupe, if need be!
Why, he'd set about it at once!

With his customary determination, yielding to a fixed idea, he devoted
himself to it. And, in the halls, at the agents', in the bars, at the
Internationale Artisten-Klause in Lisle Street, that universal
meeting-place, Pa, ever on the watch, str