The directors, the stage-managers took no notice of him; but, among the artistes, Trampy Wheel-Pad was some one, he enjoyed his leisure, recovered his self-assurance: if, in addition, he could have destroyed the legend of the whippings, he would have been perfectly happy. He would turn the conversation on the subject of smackings in the music-hall generally, in the hope of hearing them contradicted or made little of; but it was no use; every one believed in them: all, boys and girls, even the most spoiled, quoted facts: blows which they had received! my! blows hard enough to split the front of a music-hall from top to bottom! The nation with the painted faces, the blue-chins seemed to vie with one another as to who had been most through the mill.
“You’re exaggerating,” said Trampy. “It may be true, to a certain extent, in your case. But, Miss Lily, for instance: do you mean to say you believe all she tells?”
“Oh, quite!” said two Roofer girls who were there.
They had seen Lily practising. And they knew what it meant. They had had their share, too: old Roofer, gee! And Lily had done quite right to run away from her whippings.
“There you go again!” said Trampy. “Can’t you see she’s humbugging you?”
TRAMPY ENJOYED HIS LEISURE
But he pulled himself up suddenly, if Lily arrived, for, in spite of his big airs, he was all submission in her presence.
“Oh, really! Glass-Eye caught it instead of me, I suppose,” said Lily, drawing back her shoulder as though threatening to smack him, “when Pa went for me with his leather belt. And I have witnesses. I’ve been through the mill, if anybody has: that much I can say!”
Lily, after this burst of pride, would lower her head, a trifle embarrassed, like a dear little thing, all wrapped up in her duties as a wife, a wife whom her husband would cause to break her back one of these days, perhaps.