Jenny, with half a screwed-up eye on the pole, made a second attempt; the pole promptly swung round and caught her on the right shoulder. She began to cry and stamp. "I can't do it; I can't do it." "You will do it. You shall do it." Once more Jenny started, and this time succeeded so well that it was only at the very end of the new step that Madame angrily pushed the pole between her pretty ankles, rattling it from side to side to show her contempt for Jenny's obstinacy. "For it is obstinacy," she declared. "It is not stupidity. Bah! well can you do it, if you like." So Madame conquered in the end with her long pole and her sharp tongue, and Jenny learned the new and difficult step. "Listen to me," said the former. "Do you not wish to become a Prima Ballerina?" "Yes," murmured Jenny, the sooner to be out of Madame's reach, and back with the boys in Islington. "You have not the banal smile of the _danseuse_ who takes her strength from her teeth. You have not the fat forearm or dreadful wrist of those idiots who take their strength from them, and, thanks to me, you might even become a Prima Ballerina Assoluta." The words of an old comic song about a girl called Di who hailed from Utah and became a Prima Ballerina Assoluta returned, with its jingling tune, to Jenny's head, while Madame was talking. "Whistle not while I talk, inattentive one," cried her mistress, banging the pole down with a thump. "Have you dreams of success, of bouquets and sables and your own carriage? Look around you, lazy one. Look at the great Taglioni whom emperors and kings applauded. Yet you, miserable child, you can only now make one 'cut.' Why do you come here unless you have ambition to succeed, to be _maitresse_ of your art, to sweep through the stage door with silk dresses? Do I choose you from the others to dance to me, unless I wish your fortune--eh? If, after this, you work not, I finish with you. I let you go your own pig-headed way."