Jenny did work for a while, and even persevered and practiced so diligently as to be able to do a double cut and a fairly high beat, sweeping all the cups and saucers off the kitchen table as she did so. But when she had achieved this accomplishment, how much nearer was she to a public appearance, a triumphant success? What was the use of practicing difficult steps for the eyes of Ruby? What was the use of holding on to the handle of the kitchen door and putting one leg straight up till her toes twinkled over the top of it? Ruby only said, "You unnatural thing," or drew her breath in through ridged teeth in horrified amazement. What was the good of slaving all day? It was better to enjoy one's self by standing on the step of young Willie Hopkins' new bicycle and floating round Highbury Barn with curls and petticoats flying, and peals of wild laughter. It was much more pleasant to shock old ladies by puffing the smoke of cigarettes before them, or to play Follow my Leader over the corrugated-iron roof of an omnibus depot. Sometimes she took to playing truant for wind-blown afternoons by Highgate Ponds in the company of boys, and always made the same excuse to Madame of being wanted at home, until Madame grew suspicious and wrote to Mrs. Raeburn. Her mother asked why Jenny had not gone to her dancing-lesson, and where she had been. "I _was_ there," vowed Jenny. "Madame can't have noticed me." So Mrs. Raeburn wrote and explained the mistake, and Jenny managed with great anxiety to obtain possession of the letter, ostensibly in order to post it, but really in order to tear it to a hundred pieces round the corner. She was naturally a truthful child, but the long restraint of childhood had to be mitigated somehow, and lying to those in authority was no sacrifice of her egotism, the basis of all essential truthfulness. With her contemporaries she was always proudly, indeed painfully, frank. This waiting to grow up was unendurable. Everybody else was emancipated except herself. Ruby went away to be married--a source of much speculation to Jenny, who could not understand anybody desiring to live in a state of such corporeal intimacy with Ruby. "I'm positive he don't know she snores," said Jenny to her mother. "Well, what's it got to do with you?" What, indeed, had anything to do with her? It was shocking how utterly unimportant she was to Hagworth Street. Edie had gone away to learn dressmaking, and Alfie had vanished into some Midland town to learn something else, and occupying his room there was another lodger whom she liked. Then one day he came into the kitchen in a queer brown suit and said he was "off to the Front." "Gone for a soldier?" said her father, when he heard of it. "Good Lord! some people don't know when they're well off, and that's a fact."