Whereas, she went straight up in the air, up to the stars, miles high, up above everything! Bang! A smack for Glass-Eye, who was just taking off her skirt!
“And I say, Glass-Eye! Ma, who said that I ... you know what she said! But wait till they see me in my grand dresses! I’ll order them to-morrow; and my hats too. And I’ll invite Pa and Ma to the hotel! And we’ll drink champagne and I’ll have fifty francs’ worth of flowers on the table, just to show them! ‘Our Lily,’ that’s what I’m going to be, ‘our own Lily,’ damn it!”
Lily, when she was in bed, turned things over and over in her brain. Yes, her Pa was quite right. It was for her good, for her own good! Big salaries, which would all belong to her! And no more performing-dog toques, but big hats and feathers and motor-cars and furs, but no goggles! No, she must find something that wouldn’t hide her face, so that people would recognize her and say:
“That’s Lily!”
And the road behind her motor would be strewn with the bodies of pros who had died of jealousy!
And she would consult Pa and Ma on the color of her liveries, on her crest: a wheel, with wings to it! And Lily dropped off into a sleep interrupted by awful nightmares, in which Ma was dead—poor Ma!—before witnessing her triumph—and in which elephants trumpeted in her honor and sea-lions applauded her with their finny fore-paws, all along a queer sort of Tottenham Court Road, paved with fat freaks, at the end of which a Horse Shoe, as big as the Marble Arch, opened out upon the stars.
Poor Glass-Eye, on her side, had the most outlandish dreams. Her brain was turned from living in the midst of all that. She dreamed that she was flying, too; that she was Lily in her turn; that she was soaring over Whitechapel; but, from time to time, a nervous kick from Lily recalled her to the realities of life.
“Glass-Eye! There’s a knock at the door, I think. Or else I’m dreaming. What’s the time? Ten o’clock. Get up, Glass-Eye! If it’s the landlady, tell her I’ll pay her next week!”
But Glass-Eye, who had gone to the door, shut it suddenly and came back to Lily, looking quite startled: