And Pa and Ma watched Lily like a bag of money on which one keeps one’s hand, for fear of pickpockets. Ma doubled her precautions.
The gentlemen in the front boxes, especially, alarmed her, even more than the Jim Crows: creatures apart, devilish creatures, the gentlemen in the front boxes! She fancied she saw a reflection of hell in the eye-glass of every one of them. If ever Lily dared to smile to them, she knew what awaited her! Ma would get angry for nothing at all; she even scolded Lily for allowing herself to be approached on the stage by a contributor to The Piccadilly Magazine, which was publishing articles on The Little Favorites of the Public.
“I am sure you only told him a lot of nonsense,” said Ma. “A girl should call her mother in a case like that. What have you to do with the public? Aren’t you ashamed?”
No, Lily was not ashamed. She was exasperated rather. And she had not told the journalist any lies: just the plain truth, in her own little way. Sweat and blood! Broken legs! Broken arms! And here, there, there, all over her body, scars deep enough to put your finger in! That would revenge her a bit for the way in which she was treated. She knew that, when the article appeared, she would catch it at Pa’s hands; but never mind! She had told everything, everything, in revenge; just as she might have flung her bike at their heads in a fit of anger!
CHAPTER V
There had been a terrible scene at home that day. Ma had searched Lily’s trunk and had not, it is true, discovered the love letters which she believed to be hidden there, but she had found a ring! It was Trampy’s ring, which Lily, who usually concealed it about her person, had left by accident in the trunk among her things. Ma’s face was a sight, when she came down to the dining-room. She was so upset that Pa asked her:
“Are you ill, dear?”
Ma, without answering the question, pushed the ring under his nose and screamed that she had told him so: