"I'm damned if I will. Look here, you know, you can't make a fool of an Irishman." "That's quite right," Jenny agreed. "When an Irishman says he'll have a thing, he'll have it." "Well, you won't have Jenny Pearl." "Look here, I've been jolly good to you. I gave you----" "What?" interrupted Jenny in dangerous tones. "Look!" She unbuckled a wrist-watch and flung it into the road. "There's your watch, anyway. Going to get down and pick it up?" Terence whipped up the horse. "You little devil, you shall come with me." Jenny caught hold of the reins. "Shut up!" said O'Meagh. "Shut up! Don't you know better than that?" "Well, stop," said Jenny. The subaltern, in order to avoid a scene, stopped. "Look here," Jenny told him. "You think yourself a lad, I know, and you think girls can't say 'no' to you; but I can, see? You and your little cottages for two! Not much!" and Jenny slipped down from the car and vanished. "Men," she said to Winnie Ambrose, the only one left of the Glasgow Quartette. "Men! I think men are awful. I do. Really. Conceited! Oh, no; it's only a rumor." It had been arranged by Madame Aldavini that Jenny, on her return from Dublin, should join the ballet of the opera at Covent Garden. Unfortunately her first appearance in London had to be postponed for a year owing to the fact of there being no vacancy. Jenny was disheartened. It was useless for Madame Aldavini to assure her that the extra year's practice would greatly benefit her dancing. Jenny felt she had been practicing since the world was made. She continued to practice because there was nothing else to do, but time had quenched the fire of inspiration. She was tired of hearing that one day she might, with diligence and application, become a Prima Ballerina. She knew she was a natural dancer, but Terpischore having endowed her with grace and lightness and twinkling feet, left the spirit that could ripen these gifts to some other divinity. She had, it is true, escaped the doom of an infant prodigy, but it might have been better to blossom as a prodigy than to lie fallow when the warmth and glory of the footlights were burning without her.