a pair of shoes.  Then they went upstairs and danced to a stout little lady, called the Sylph, who bobbed about like a ball at the end of a piece of elastic.  What Tommy never forgot was that while they danced the Sylph kept saying, “One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four,” which they did not seem to mind, but when she said “One, two, three, four, picture!” they all stopped and stood motionless, though it might be with one foot as high as their head and their arms stretched out toward the floor, as if they had suddenly seen a halfpenny there.

In the waiting-room, how they joked and pirouetted and gossiped, and hugged and scorned each other, and what slang they spoke and how pretty they often looked next moment, and how they denounced the one that had just gone out as a cat with whom you could not get in a word edgeways, and oh, how prompt they were to give a slice of their earnings to any “cat” who was hard up!  But still, they said, she had talent, but no genius.  How they pitied people without genius.

Have you ever tasted an encore or a reception?  Tommy never had his teeth in one, but he heard much about them in that room, and concluded that they were some sort of cake.  It was not the girls who danced in groups, but those who danced alone, that spoke of their encores and receptions, and sometimes they had got them last night, sometimes years ago.  Two girls met in the room, one of whom had stolen the other’s reception, and—­but it was too dreadful to write about.  Most of them carried newspaper cuttings in their purses and read them aloud to the others, who would not listen.  Tommy listened, however, and as it was all about how one house had risen at the girls and they had brought another down, he thought they led the most adventurous lives.

Occasionally they sent him out to buy newspapers or chestnuts, and then he had to keep a sharp eye on the police lest they knew about Reddy.  It was a point of honor with all the boys he knew to pretend that the policeman was after them.  To gull the policeman into thinking all was well they blackened their faces and wore their jackets inside out; their occupation was a constant state of readiness to fly from him, and when he tramped out of sight, unconscious of their existence, they emerged from dark places and spoke in exultant whispers.  Tommy had been proud to join them, but he now resented their going on in this way; he felt that he alone had the right to fly from the law.  And once at least while he was flying something happened to him that he was to remember better, far better, than his mother’s face.

What set him running on this occasion (he had been sent out to get one of the girls’ shoes soled) was the grandest sight to be seen in London—­an endless row of policemen walking in single file, all with the right leg in the air at the same time, then the left leg.  Seeing at once that they were after him, Tommy ran, ran, ran until in turning a corner he found himself wedged between two legs.  He was of just sufficient size to fill the aperture, but after a momentary look he squeezed through, and they proved to be the gate into an enchanted land.