"Yes, I suppose so," said Mrs. Raeburn grudgingly. "But don't get putting it in your mouth."
"There's a Miss Vain," said Ruby.
"I'm not."
"Peacocks like looking-glasses," nagged Ruby.
"I isn't a peacock. I's a queen."
"There's a sauce! Whoever heard?" commented Ruby.
The clown's sentimental and pleasantly rhetorical descriptions had no direct influence on the child's mind. But when his granddaughter, Miss Lilli Vergoe, all chiffon and ostrich plumes, took her upon a peau de soie lap, and clasped her rosy cheeks to a frangipani breast, Jenny thought she had never experienced any sensation half so delicious.
Amid the heavy glooms and fusty smells of the old house in Hagworth Street, Miss Lilli Vergoe blossomed like an exotic flower, or rather, in Jenny's own simile, like lather. Her china-blue eyes were amazingly attractive. Her honey-colored hair and Dresden cheeks fascinated the impressionable child with all the wonder of an expensive doll. There was no part of her that was not soft and beautiful to stroke. She woke in Jenny a cooing affection such as had never been by her bestowed upon a living soul.
Moreover, what Mr. Vergoe talked about, Lilli showed her how to achieve; so that, unknown to Mrs. Raeburn, Jenny slowly acquired that ambition for public appreciation which makes the actress. Terpischore herself, carrying credentials from Apollo, would not have been a more powerful mistress than Lilli Vergoe, a second line girl in the Corps de Ballet of the Orient Palace of Varieties. Under her tuition Jenny learned a hundred airs and graces, which, when re-enacted in the kitchen of Number Seventeen, either caused a command to cease fidgeting or an invitation to look at the comical child.
She learned, too, more than mere airs and graces. She was grounded very thoroughly in primary technique, so that, as time went on, she could step passably well upon her toes and achieve the "splits" and "strides" and "handsprings" of a more acrobatic mode.