greeting was none too engaging either. A curt smile--"Glad to
see you, Miss Lily"--and, as for the bike, he hadn't understood a word of
what the one-eyed creature who had just left had tried to say.

"I thought as much," said Lily, laughing. "That's why I came."

And, in a few words, she explained what she wanted. First, repair the
twisted frame; next, a slight alteration for a new trick; a step here,
another there.

"Always fresh tricks, Lily?"

"Always, Jimmy. No end of bruises, I tell you!"

"It's part of the game," said Jimmy.

"I should like to see you try it," retorted Lily contemptuously,
"squeezing through the frame while it's going, with that pedal barking
your back," and she rubbed herself as she spoke. "Only yesterday I got a
kick; gee! It's like those new tricks in which I don't feel safe: riding
with one foot on the saddle and the other on the bar and playing a banjo;
it makes me shiver as I go past the footlights; and Pa watching me, you
know; and, if I lose my balance, I get black and blue somewhere."

"Pooh!" said Jimmy. "One can't expect a white skin at the game."

Lily didn't care for this. If she couldn't be courted, at least she liked
to be pitied: that flattered her pride.... It was all very well for Pa to
say, "It's part of the game, my little lady." But that josser of a Jimmy,
talking like that at his ease!

"I'm glad I'm not your daughter!" she said. "My! You'd be harder than
Pa."

"Your Pa is hard, sometimes; but he's very fond of you, for all that."

"Of course," said Lily, "he wouldn't like me to break my neck; I bring him
in too much for that, eh?"

"Come," interrupted Jimmy, "don't talk nonsense. It's not right to speak
as you're doing. You'll be sorry for it, I'm sure. Tell me, rather: you
were saying you wanted a step here, another there; do you mean like
this?"

And he rummaged among his tools, looked for loose pieces, showed them to
Lily, while thinking of other things:

"Look here," he went on, "do you think you're the only one that's got to
work? Suppose you were shut up all day in a factory? Have you ever been to
a factory? Do you know the life of a metal-buffer girl at Sheffield,
standing in front of her wheel, from morning till night, and work, work,
work?"

"But I'm not a work-girl, you great silly! You know I'm an artiste! And,
now, shall I tell you what I think of you, Jimmy?" said Lily, pouting.
"You're a bad man, that's what you are!"

And thereupon she put