“Don’t eat chocolates while you’re dancing, you, Eva! Hi, you, Gwendolen!”
And, to emphasize his remarks, he threw his felt hat at them.
“Silly old ass!” thought Pa, with a grin. “To think you can train artistes like that. You’ll use up fifty hats, you old fool, while my belt remains as good as new!”
For that was now Pa’s system, the strap—“à la Mexico!”—not that he used it often nor very hard; but he terrorized Lily with it and the other girls were afraid of it, too, though they never got more than the threat, seeing that they were apprentices, who might have run away if he had struck out.
All this did not prevent them from working with a will—trot, trot, trot—when there was no Roofer on the stage and no elephants or ponies: yoop, on to the bikes and the fun began! The sight of Pa training his star made the apprentices shake in their knickers. Lily was to do everything and to do it very well: Pa ran after her, in a never-ending circle, and, from the corner of his eye, watched Tom, who held the girls and made them work, upon his instructions; and when they got off their bikes to wipe their foreheads:
“Bravo, Miss Woolly-legs!” said Pa sarcastically. “Tired, eh? Dead, eh? Suppose you tried to get up again ... and be quick about it! And as for you, Tom, don’t let them fall, or I’ll catch you one on the side of the head!”
For Pa already knew by experience that their little ladyships shirked work; that they shook with fright; that they lost confidence after a bad fall; and that then it was finished, nothing to be done with them: they’d let themselves be killed sooner.
Maud, for instance, that Jonah, ever after one day she had seen her blood flow, trembled before her bike like a sheep that scents the slaughter-house. It was no use Pa’s threatening her with his belt: she wouldn’t let herself go, on the contrary, held on to everything, no matter what, for fear of falling. He ought to have sent her away long ago; he would pack her off that very night ... and made no bones about telling her so, that Jonah!
Then Pa, giving Lily a rest, occupied himself with the girls: taught them the principle of the standstill, of side-riding, of the “swan,” of the “frog.” And,—quickly!—the indefatigable Pa went back to Lily, made her begin a trick ten times, twenty times over, so great was his rage at the lost time, the elephants, the Hauptmanns, Roofer. He pulled faces, clenched his fists:
“Why don’t you do as I say when I tell you, damn it!”