out her tongue, turned her back on him and began to
look at the walls, the diagrams, the drawings, an illustration out of
_Engineering_.

There was a pause.

Jimmy, while handling the bike, gazed at Lily. There was no sentimentality
about Jimmy, but his lively imagination made him see things through and
through; and, whatever he might be, Jimmy was not bad. That little Lily:
to think that, among all the girls of her own age, she was the only one to
do that trick! He pitied her and all child prodigies. To his mind, there
was something unsportsmanlike about it; something like a race won by a
one-year-old, with jockey, whip and spurs. He did not believe all he
heard, of course. He knew, he lived with them, he was one of them. He knew
the peculiar mania of the music-hall, the instinctive lie, uttered as if
to discourage competition by giving it a fright at the start. To listen to
them, it meant the horsewhip, the belt, all day long; going "through the
mill," all the time. Among the people with the painted faces, it was a
shot at martyrdom, a chance for professional boasting. The most
commonplace, the most coddled lives were made more interesting by means of
imaginary wounds and scars, like those explorers, in the books, who cross
Africa without food or drink, barefooted, with a crocodile snapping at
their heels.

He took good care not to exaggerate. Life in the halls was no worse than
anywhere else, thank God! It had its good side and its bad side and its
professional risks. The "pros," taking them all round, were as good as the
"jossers." He wanted to be just. He had seen many who were very happy; one
could get anything done by firm kindness. He could also understand, in the
terrible struggle for bread, that a man went on toiling hard in the trade
in which he was born. A pro could not make a blue-stocking of his
daughter; some were born duchesses, on satin; others artistes on the
boards. One trade was as good as another; but dangerous practicings,
bruised flesh, seamed skins: no, he didn't approve of that. He had seen
the Laurences, mad with ambition, beginning all over again, in spite of
falls calculated to stave in the stage; had seen girls who "do knots"
lying in the dressing-rooms, gasping, exhausted. Even when professional
vanity alone prompted such excesses, Jimmy protested within himself; and
then there were so many abuses.... Besides, the stage so often spoiled a
woman: every branch of the stage, from the highes