But these social successes did not make Lily forget her business affairs. Harrasford’s new music-hall worried her: if she could only play there, only snatch it from the New Trickers! For they would certainly try to get there; and the architect, of course, knew ...
But Lily was interrupted by the call-boy: time for her to go down to the stage!
A hurricane came up from the orchestra, muffled, with beats of the big drum, like distant cannon. The curtain would go up soon; it was the time when Lily stretched her legs, before giving her performance, and took a breath of air in the painted forest. A click of the padlock and:
“Come along, Glass-Eye, the bike!”
Lily, in spite of her brilliant successes in England, was dead tired of tipping the boys; it ran away with all her money. As she allowed herself the luxury of a maid, by Gollywog, she might as well make use of her; she wasn’t going to feed her to do nothing! And poor Glass-Eye attended to the bike, at the risk of putting out her other eye. Every day the struggle between Glass-Eye and the bike formed the joy and the delight of the passage. There were incredible swervings, scratchings of the wall, barkings of Glass-Eye’s shins. Lily followed behind, bursting with laughter, warning Glass-Eye to take care or she would put the bike out of gear by knocking it about with her legs:
“Oh, where’s my belt?” she cried, patting the back of her hand.
The artistes, attracted by the noise, half-opened the doors; laughing eyes gleamed at the spy-holes; voices cried:
“Go it! Never say die!”
Glass-Eye perspired like anything, pursed her eyebrows above her fat, red cheeks, grumbled, in her Whitechapel slang:
“Kim up, you lousy moke! Igher up, Jerusalem, you pig-headed bag of tricks!”