ove to make people talk, listened
with all his ears, took notes. It was very difficult to get at the real
facts; one had to ferret them out; the owners of the troupes jealously
concealed their methods, endeavored to put you off, talked of apprentices
at five or six shillings a day, plus food and expenses. Pa saw through
these tricks and, to arrive at the truth, discounted the six shillings
down to sixpence. Lily, her Pa's own daughter, easily obtained information
from the apprentices themselves which she afterward repeated to him. He
studied _The Era_, the paper of the Profession, got the names by heart:
the managers, the "Pas", the "bosses", the "profs." He got acquainted with
some of them personally. Old Martello, for instance, the father of Ave
Maria and the "Bambinis." Martello could have given Pa hints; but he no
longer interested himself in anything except his Bambinis, whom the poor
man, grown calm with age and overwork, was now spoiling. The rest left him
indifferent; he hardly listened, spoke in short sentences, like a man too
old to care:

"Train apprentices? What's the good? Run a troupe? Pooh, madness!"

Pa thought this exclusive admiration very touching, but it wasn't what he
wanted and, madness or not, damn it, he was resolved to carry out his idea
to the end!

There were imperial and royal troupes, "Risleys," carpet acrobats,
pyramids of tumblers, some of them undergoing an apprenticeship of cuffs
and thumps. Pa was not interested in these methods, did not approve of
them; he had never knocked Lily about, never let her fall on
purpose--"Have I, Lily?"--whereas in the imperial and royal they sent the
apprentice sprawling on his back, just to teach him, when he started
wrong.

Still, all these were boys; and it was the little girls that interested
him, for he meant to have only girls among his apprentices. The rest
wasn't his damned business; but the different troupes of Roofer girls, for
instance, affected him directly: where did old Roofer fish those girls
out? That's what Pa wanted to know. He had even, in order to visit the
school, pretended to bring Lily as a pupil. He had seen the place in Broad
Street, where they turned out "sisters" by the gross; had watched the
squads in knickerbockers, scattered over the immense room, like recruits
drilling in a barrack-yard: groups engaged in club-swinging, juggling,
clog-dancing, all together, a tangle of different movements timed "one,
two, three!" Roofer c