"Where could she go and learn this dancing?" the bewildered mother asked.
"Madame Aldavini's," said the old clown. "That's where my granddaughter learned."
It was a profession, after all, thought Mrs. Raeburn. What else would Jenny do? Go into service? Somehow she could not picture her in a parlormaid's cap and apron. Well, why not the stage, if it had got to be? She discussed the project with her sister Mabel, who was horrified.
"A ballet-girl? Are you mad, Florence? Why, what a disgrace. Whatever would Bill say? An actress? Better put her on the streets at once."
Mrs. Raeburn could not make up her mind.
"If any daughter of yours goes play-acting," went on Mrs. Purkiss, "I can't allow her to come to tea with my Percy and my Claude any more, and that's all about it."
"Jenny doesn't think going to tea with her cousins anything to wave flags over."
"Pig-headed, that's what you are, Florence. All the years you've been a sister of mine, I've known you for a pig-headed woman. It doesn't matter whether you're ill or well, right or wrong, no one mustn't advise you. That's how you come to marry Charlie."
The opposition of Mrs. Purkiss inclined her sister to give way before Jenny's desire. It only needed a little more family interference, and the child would be taken straight off to Madame Aldavini's School for Dancing.
Miss Horner supplied it; for, two or three days after, a letter came from Clapton, written in a quavering hand crossed and recrossed on thin, crackling paper, deeply edged in black.