Picture her, then, dancing alone in the quiet Islington street to this faded tune of Italy, as presently down the street that seemed stained with the warmth of alien suns shuffled an old man. He stopped to regard the dancing child over the crook of his ebony walking-stick. "Aren't you Mrs. Raeburn's little girl?" he asked. Jenny melted into shyness, lost nearly all her beauty, and became bunched and ordinary for a moment. "Yes," she whispered. "Humph!" grunted the old man, and solemnly presented the organ grinder with a halfpenny. Ruby O'Connor's voice rang out down the street. "Come back directly, you limb!" she called. Jenny looked irresolute, but presently decided to obey. That same evening the old man tapped at the kitchen door. "Come in," said Mrs. Raeburn. "Is that you, Mr. Vergoe? Something gone wrong with your gas again? I do wish Charlie would remember to mend it." "No, there's nothing the matter with the gas," explained the lodger. (For Mr. Vergoe was the lodger of Number Seventeen.) "Only I think that child of yours'll make a dancer some day." "Make a what?" said the mother. "A dancer. I was watching her this morning. Wonderful notion of time. You ought to have her trained, so to speak." "My good gracious, whatever for?" "The stage, of course." "No, thank _you_. I don't want none of my children gadding round theaters." "But you like a good play yourself?" "That's quite another kettle of fish. Thank you all the same, Mr. Vergoe, Jenny'll not go on to the stage." "You're making a great mistake," he insisted. "And I suppose I know something about dancing, or ought to, as it were." "I have my own ideas what's good for Jenny." "But ain't she going to have a say in the matter, so to speak?" "My dear man, she isn't seven yet." "None too early to start dancing." "I'd rather not, thank you, and please don't start putting fancies in the child's head." "Of course, I shouldn't. Of course not. That ain't to be thought of." But the very next day Mr. Walter Vergoe invited Jenny to come and see some pretty picture-books, and Jenny, with much finger and pinafore sucking and buried cheeks, followed him through the door near which she had always been commanded not to loiter. "Come in, my dear, and look at Mr. Vergoe's pretty pictures. Don't be shy. Here's a bag of lollipops," he said, holding up a pennyworth of bull's-eyes.