“Can you understand a word of it, Glass-Eye?” asked Lily, explaining to her maid the tricks which the artiste had to fight against. “I don’t know how the small turns manage,” she concluded, in the tone of a woman who towers above all that.
Lily’s prettiness made the people in the street turn round to look at her. They would gaze at her cheeky feather, whisper, “You pretty, pretty darling!” in her ear. Lily, secretly delighted, held herself ready to crush the saucy rascal with a “How dare you?” like a lady who knows how to appreciate a compliment, without permitting the least familiarity. And when she approached the agency, she insisted on Glass-Eye’s keeping by her side, asked for things: her wrist-bag, her embroidered handkerchief. And her way of walking in! Lily pretended to be short-sighted, so as to see no one in the rotten lot. She sent in her card, sat down in the waiting-room. It reminded her of the dentist’s, with those pale people sitting on benches; those serio-comics, all over-fat; loud-voiced topical singers, who took the place of the real artistes, just like the bioscopes and cinematographs! There were also little families—small turns that had struggled hard to learn a few tricks—nobody wanted them, because they had no “chic” costumes, sometimes, or no lithos....
Those were received like dogs: a wretched couple was just coming out, a man and a woman, sad with a humility accustomed to rebuffs; and the agent drove them toward the door, with his voice:
“Eccentric mashers? No opening for you. Call again.”
Lily got a good reception, in the agent’s room; but there was nothing for her. And the agent saw her to the door, with a satisfied air and a knowing wink, as though to make the others believe ... Lily didn’t like that kind—her short-sightedness did not prevent her noticing it and blushing at it—but she was very pleased, all the same, to be seen to the door, before those small turns who were received like dogs....
On the pavement outside, the wretched couple came up to her shyly:
“Don’t you know us, Miss Lily? The Para-Paras.”
She had to listen to a pitiful tale. She heard nothing but that, when she went on her rounds of visits to the agents. Oh, the distress which she beheld there! It made Lily feel quite ill at night. A little more and she would have said her prayers, before getting into bed, to thank God that she hadn’t come to that. Poor Paras! Starving, no doubt, remaining for weeks in their garret, pretending that they had been performing in the provinces ... abroad.... Lily pictured them passing the stage-doorkeepers to whom they had sold their parrots and being greeted with a “What’s for breakfast, Polly?”
“Miss Lily,” they confessed, in a whisper, “you know such a lot of people: if ever you hear of anything for us, never mind where ...”
“Poor beggars!” thought Lily.