P.T. CLIFTON, MANAGER

Ma always said no, pretending that she had no money; whereas Lily knew to the contrary. She knew that the troupe earned a great deal and that the troupe was herself. The other day, at the theater, she had heard her aunt, who felt bitter that Mr. Clifton had not accepted her daughter Daisy—who could have learned the business and later on have starred by herself!—she had heard that “old sheep” say, speaking of her:

“What a shame to dress her like that! A girl who brings them in capital to invest!”

So Pa was investing capital. She didn’t exactly know what investing capital meant; no doubt it meant making a lot of money. She asked for none of it! Children belong to their parents! But she would have liked to be treated with more consideration, to be spoiled; to get presents, nice things. She had plenty from her Pa, true enough: presents, my! But they were cheap gifts, for all that.... She was always having promises made her of more important things; and the promises were never kept: that big gold watch, for instance. She had a thirsting for luxury. It seemed to her that she was being treated like a performing dog, not a bit better. Ma, without exactly knowing, but with an infallible instinct, saw all this budding under that obstinate brow. Mr. Clifton might see nothing in it; but it was not so easy to take in a mother! Was there a love affair beneath it all, Ma asked herself. No, not yet; it might come later on, as with that apprentice who had run away, or that other one whom she had had to send packing for being too free with men. But Lily would not leave them like that.

She did not let her go out. “Glass-eye Maud” ran the errands and Lily stayed at home, like a good little girl of whom her mother wished to make a lady. When she did happen to go out, she must not be long, or else it was, “Where have you been? Tell me at once!” At the theater, when Pa lost his temper, she could reckon on a mighty fillip, and then it was over: Pa was sorry, rather than otherwise. Ma, on the contrary, would nag for hours; muttered inarticulate phrases about “devil,” “wild bull,” and “taming her;” there was no end to it. Lily champed the bit! A star, indeed! Was that being a star? She thought differently! She had seen others drive up to the theater in their motors, accompanied by gentlemen carrying flowers, like that famous “M’dlle” at the Palace. Yes, those were stars: they dined at the Horse Shoe and did not spend their time in useless housework. Oh, she was quite sick and tired of that life! She’d had enough of it. Meanwhile, the days passed and the weeks and it was always the same thing: housework and stage-work; work, work, work....

It was late that morning; they were not practising. Pa had run down on the previous day to see a troupe of cyclists, the famous Pawnees, who were back from the Continent, on their way to New York, and performing that week at the Brighton Hippodrome. Lily was in her room later than usual, as Ma was not awake. Maud had gone down to the kitchen. The apprentices were getting up, joking with one another, like tom-boys used to sharing the same bed at home, the same room at the theater, to dressing, undressing, splashing about naked in the same bath-tub.

“Get up, Lily,” said one of them, laughing and raising her sturdy little hand. “Get up, or....”

“No,” said Lily, “let me alone, I’m dead.”

As it happened, on the day before there had been a general tumble, six in a row, on the back-wheel; one of them, losing her balance, had dragged the others with her and the lot had fallen flat in a tangle of steel and flesh. Bucking Horse, Old Jigger, Street Donkey—the nicknames they gave their bikes—had kicked them to the raw. They showed one another the bruises on their limbs: “Oh, don’t it hurt, just!” “What about mine?” “Look here!” like young recruits bragging of their wounds after the skirmish.

“Lily!”