"There you are," he observed proudly. "Fairy Queen as large as life and twice as natural. Now all you want is a wand with a gold star on the end of it, and there's nothing you couldn't do, in a manner of speaking. Now pop off to ma and show her your crown." He held her for a moment up to the glass, in which Jenny regarded herself with a new interest, and when he set her down again she went out of the room with the careful step of one who has imagined greatness. Downstairs she was greeted by her mother with exclamations of astonishment. "Whatever have you got on your head?" "A crown." "Who gave it you, for Heaven's sake?" "The lodger." "Mr. Vergoe?" Jenny nodded. "I may wear it, mayn't I, mother?" "Yes, I suppose so," said Mrs. Raeburn grudgingly. "But don't get putting it in your mouth." "There's a Miss Vain," said Ruby. "I'm not." "Peacocks like looking-glasses," nagged Ruby. "I isn't a peacock. I's a queen." "There's a sauce! Whoever heard?" commented Ruby. The clown's sentimental and pleasantly rhetorical descriptions had no direct influence on the child's mind. But when his granddaughter, Miss Lilli Vergoe, all chiffon and ostrich plumes, took her upon a _peau de soie_ lap, and clasped her rosy cheeks to a frangipani breast, Jenny thought she had never experienced any sensation half so delicious. Amid the heavy glooms and fusty smells of the old house in Hagworth Street, Miss Lilli Vergoe blossomed like an exotic flower, or rather, in Jenny's own simile, like lather. Her china-blue eyes were amazingly attractive. Her honey-colored hair and Dresden cheeks fascinated the impressionable child with all the wonder of an expensive doll. There was no part of her that was not soft and beautiful to stroke. She woke in Jenny a cooing affection such as had never been by her bestowed upon a living soul. Moreover, what Mr. Vergoe talked about, Lilli showed her how to achieve; so that, unknown to Mrs. Raeburn, Jenny slowly acquired that ambition for public appreciation which makes the actress. Terpischore herself, carrying credentials from Apollo, would not have been a more powerful mistress than Lilli Vergoe, a second line girl in the _Corps de Ballet_ of the Orient Palace of Varieties. Under her tuition Jenny learned a hundred airs and graces, which, when re-enacted in the kitchen of Number Seventeen, either caused a command to cease fidgeting or an invitation to look at the comical child. She learned, too, more than mere airs and graces. She was grounded very thoroughly in primary technique, so that, as time went on, she could step passably well upon her toes and achieve the "splits" and "strides" and "handsprings" of a more acrobatic mode. Therefore, though in the September just before her seventh birthday Mrs. Raeburn decided it was time to begin Jenny's education, it is very obvious that Jenny's education was really begun on the sunlit morning when Mr. Vergoe saw her dancing to a sugared melody from "Cavalleria."