Dorothy grunted at this accusation, but she refused to surrender her bed, and Norah soon gave up talking in general terms about people who were afraid to expose themselves to a little inconvenience for the sake of doing a kind action, because Lily arrived next day with the news that her sister had obtained leave to be "off" for a week and was advising her to do everything she could to get an engagement as soon as possible. There were problems of arrears of rent and unpaid bills from the solution of which it would be advantageous for Lily to escape by going on tour. The few personal possessions of their mother the sisters would divide between them, and the undertaker was to be satisfied at the expense of a fishmonger who, being new to West Kensington, had let Mrs. Haden run an account. "And your father?" Norah could not help asking; but Lily avoided a reply, and Norah, who had been too well brought up to ask twice, formed her own conclusions. "Anyway, my dear," she assured her friend, "you can count on me. I hadn't intended to do anything definite until I was nineteen, but of course I'm not going to desert you. So we'll go and interview managers together." "Doris advises me to try Walter Keal," said Lily. "Dick--her husband--has given me a letter for him which may be useful, he says." "Who's Walter Keal?" "Don't you know?" exclaimed Lily. "He sends out all the Vanity shows." Norah bit her lips in mortification. She hated not to know things and decided to avoid meeting Doris, who as a professional actress of at least a year's standing would be likely to patronize her. "You see," Lily went on, "he'll be sending out 'Miss Elsie of Chelsea' at the end of December, and if we could get in the chorus we should be all right till June." "The chorus?" echoed Norah, disdainfully. "I never thought of joining the chorus of a musical comedy." "It might only be for a few months, and when you're with Walter Keal there's always the chance of getting to the Vanity." "A Vanity girl!" repeated Norah, scornfully. "For everybody to look at!" Lily told her friend that it was better to be looked at as a Vanity girl than to spend her life looking at other people from a window in West Kensington. "But I can't sing," Norah objected. "Sing! Who ever heard of a chorus-girl that could sing?" The lowly position of a Vanity girl was not proof against the alchemy of Norah's self-esteem; she made up her mind to renounce Pinero and all his works and go into musical comedy. When the two friends reached the small street off Leicester Square and saw extending up the steps of the building in which the offices of Mr. Walter Keal were situated an endless queue of girls waiting to interview the manager, Norah was discouraged. "Oh, he has lots of companies," Lily explained. Then she addressed herself to a dirty-faced man with a collar much too large for him who was in charge of the entrance. "You give me your letter, and it'll be all right."