Mrs. Raeburn rushed into the room and saw the child with the blade against her throat. She snatched away the knife. "Whatever was you going to do?" "I want to go to Glasgow," said Jenny; "and I'll kill myself if I don't." "I'll give you 'kill yourself,'" cried Mrs. Raeburn, slapping her daughter's cheeks so that a crimson mark burned on its dead paleness. "Well, I will," said Jenny. "We'll see about it," said Mrs. Raeburn. Jenny knew she had won; and deserved victory, for she had meant what she said. Her mother was greatly perplexed. Who would look after Jenny? Madame Aldavini explained that there would be three other girls, that they would all live together, that she herself would see them all established, as she had to go north herself to give the final touches to the ballet which she was producing; that no harm would come to Jenny; that she would really be more strictly looked after than she was at home. "That's quite impossible," said Mrs. Raeburn. Madame smiled sardonically. "However," Mrs. Raeburn went on, "I suppose she's got to make a start some time. So let her go." Now followed an interlude from toe-dancing--an interlude which Jenny enjoyed, although once she nearly strained herself doing the "strides." But acrobatic dancing came very easily to her, and progress was much more easily discernible than in the long and tiresome education for the ballet. Of the other three girls who were to make up the Aldavini Quartette, only one was still at the school. She was a plump girl called Eileen Vaughan, three years older than Jenny, prim and, in the latter's opinion, "very stuck up." Jenny hoped that the other two would be more fun than Eileen. Eileen was a pig, although she liked her name. Great problems arose in Hagworth Street out of Jenny's embarkation upon the ship of life. So long as she had been merely a pupil of Madame Aldavini's, family opposition to her choice of a profession had slumbered; but with the prospect of her speedy debut, it broke out again very fiercely.