“I should like to see you try it,” retorted Lily contemptuously, “squeezing through the frame while it’s going, with that pedal barking your back,” and she rubbed herself as she spoke. “Only yesterday I got a kick; gee! It’s like those new tricks in which I don’t feel safe: riding with one foot on the saddle and the other on the bar and playing a banjo; it makes me shiver as I go past the footlights; and Pa watching me, you know; and, if I lose my balance, I get black and blue somewhere.”
“Pooh!” said Jimmy. “One can’t expect a white skin at the game.”
Lily didn’t care for this. If she couldn’t be courted, at least she liked to be pitied: that flattered her pride.... It was all very well for Pa to say, “It’s part of the game, my little lady.” But that josser of a Jimmy, talking like that at his ease!
“I’m glad I’m not your daughter!” she said. “My! You’d be harder than Pa.”
“Your Pa is hard, sometimes; but he’s very fond of you, for all that.”
“Of course,” said Lily, “he wouldn’t like me to break my neck; I bring him in too much for that, eh?”
“Come,” interrupted Jimmy, “don’t talk nonsense. It’s not right to speak as you’re doing. You’ll be sorry for it, I’m sure. Tell me, rather: you were saying you wanted a step here, another there; do you mean like this?”
And he rummaged among his tools, looked for loose pieces, showed them to Lily, while thinking of other things:
“Look here,” he went on, “do you think you’re the only one that’s got to work? Suppose you were shut up all day in a factory? Have you ever been to a factory? Do you know the life of a metal-buffer girl at Sheffield, standing in front of her wheel, from morning till night, and work, work, work?”
“But I’m not a work-girl, you great silly! You know I’m an artiste! And, now, shall I tell you what I think of you, Jimmy?” said Lily, pouting. “You’re a bad man, that’s what you are!”