“A lady that he knew years ago.”
“Lady!” sneered Carrie, spitefully, with a nasty, upward curl of her ripe lip. “Why, she was the same as me—he said so.”
“She was a woman, my dear; that’s all. Have you really finished? Then where shall we go?”
She put on her hat in a hurry and cast decisively for a popular contortionist at one of the halls—I think it was the Royal.
“They say he twists himself about something awful,” she added, with a little grimace and a gleeful shudder.
We clattered down the stairs. The oak thudded heavily behind our quick feet, as if it had regrets for Adeline.
[JIMMY.]
HIS full name was James Adolphus Carol, but everyone called him just Jimmy. He was Jimmy to all of us in the Inn; Jimmy to the music-hall managers and music-hall artistes.
He was a little spindle-shanked fellow, like a jockey, but a bit too gentlemanly. He had bulging, gray-blue eyes and a sunken, heavily freckled face. His top hat was always very sleek and a little on one side, but the rest of his dress fell short of perfect finish. I’ve seen him with his shoe tied up with string and his collar pinned together in front because he’d lost his last stud.