Glass-Eye, half asleep, clumsily gathered up her parcels, while Lily looked round for the baggage-man. On the platform was an avalanche of bags, boxes, picture-frames, as at the departure from Euston; the basket trunks were being piled up in the theater-vans. Lily pointed out her hamper and her bike to the boy from the theater, who had come to meet the “program” at the station.
“Are you the bicyclist?”
“I am,” replied Lily modestly.
She gave her address: not the pros’ boarding-house, but private “digs” which had been recommended to her in London, with a note of introduction. Then she walked out of the station, followed by Glass-Eye.
Lily knew Liverpool, vaguely, as she knew all the towns of the United Kingdom and those of America, too, and Australia and India and Germany and Holland and elsewhere. They were all muddled up in her memory, she had seen so many, and made as it were one great city, but for occasional salient points, as in the towns which you came to in a boat, or those in which you had a circus parade, or others still, here and there: Glasgow, where she had fallen and broken a tooth; Blackpool with its ball-rooms, its tower and a “contract!” Sheffield, with its smoking chimneys; Washington, with a dome at the end; New York, with its sky-scrapers. The towns of her early childhood, leaning against mountains, buried under trees, were more remote, more like a dream. Elephants, monkeys, harnessed buffaloes; and then Mexico and Ave Maria, London and those footy rotters!
Liverpool was Lime Street: Lily remembered a sort of round church; when you got to that, you turned to the left. She soon found the house and received from a huge, full-blown lady the friendly welcome which Lily’s artless air and fair curls always insured her. No gentleman with them? All alone by themselves? A room with a big double bed, a little parlor with a bow-window; sixteen shillings a week, including the use of the kitchen. Just then, the baggage-man arrived, took the trunk up to the room and went on with the bike to the pros’ boarding-house and the theater. Lily, assisted by Glass-Eye, fixed herself up for the week: her dresses on the pegs, her linen safe under lock and key in the hamper. Then she made a special parcel of things for the stage: paper flowers, ostrich feathers, white laced boots.
“There, wrap that up in my petticoat,” said Lily. “And the music and the gollywog: you can bring all that to my dressing-room to-morrow morning.”
Next, Lily made herself look smart, freshened up her two bows, threw her green muslin scarf over her shoulders and went down to the parlor to pick out her favorite tune—The Bluebells of Scotland—with one finger on the piano. Meanwhile, the landlady spread the cloth: bread, marmalade, watercress, two eggs. Then, according to instructions received, Glass-Eye announced to Miss Lily that tea was ready. Lily affably invited Glass-Eye to sit down to table with her; and the two ate away like friends. Lily took the opportunity to settle her expenses; for instance—and this she insisted upon—if she, Lily, took a maid, she wouldn’t have her for nothing; she intended to pay her some small monthly wage.
“And a good many little perquisites besides, you understand, Glass-Eye; my old frocks, my hats.”
Glass-Eye did not ask that, would have given her other eye to serve Miss Lily.