So Madame conquered in the end with her long pole and her sharp tongue, and Jenny learned the new and difficult step.
"Listen to me," said the former. "Do you not wish to become a Prima Ballerina?"
"Yes," murmured Jenny, the sooner to be out of Madame's reach, and back with the boys in Islington.
"You have not the banal smile of the danseuse who takes her strength from her teeth. You have not the fat forearm or dreadful wrist of those idiots who take their strength from them, and, thanks to me, you might even become a Prima Ballerina Assoluta."
The words of an old comic song about a girl called Di who hailed from Utah and became a Prima Ballerina Assoluta returned, with its jingling tune, to Jenny's head, while Madame was talking.
"Whistle not while I talk, inattentive one," cried her mistress, banging the pole down with a thump.
"Have you dreams of success, of bouquets and sables and your own carriage? Look around you, lazy one. Look at the great Taglioni whom emperors and kings applauded. Yet you, miserable child, you can only now make one 'cut.' Why do you come here unless you have ambition to succeed, to be maîtresse of your art, to sweep through the stage door with silk dresses? Do I choose you from the others to dance to me, unless I wish your fortune—eh? If, after this, you work not, I finish with you. I let you go your own pig-headed way."
Jenny did work for a while, and even persevered and practiced so diligently as to be able to do a double cut and a fairly high beat, sweeping all the cups and saucers off the kitchen table as she did so. But when she had achieved this accomplishment, how much nearer was she to a public appearance, a triumphant success? What was the use of practicing difficult steps for the eyes of Ruby? What was the use of holding on to the handle of the kitchen door and putting one leg straight up till her toes twinkled over the top of it? Ruby only said, "You unnatural thing," or drew her breath in through ridged teeth in horrified amazement. What was the good of slaving all day? It was better to enjoy one's self by standing on the step of young Willie Hopkins' new bicycle and floating round Highbury Barn with curls and petticoats flying, and peals of wild laughter. It was much more pleasant to shock old ladies by puffing the smoke of cigarettes before them, or to play Follow my Leader over the corrugated-iron roof of an omnibus depot.
Sometimes she took to playing truant for wind-blown afternoons by Highgate Ponds in the company of boys, and always made the same excuse to Madame of being wanted at home, until Madame grew suspicious and wrote to Mrs. Raeburn.
Her mother asked why Jenny had not gone to her dancing-lesson, and where she had been.