"Fancy!" said Clara. "Whoever put that idea into your head?"
"Well, I started learning some of the songs they sing in the halls, and some friends of mine gave a party last January and I made quite a hit. I'll sing you a song now, if you like."
And Maudie, sitting down at the piano, accompanied herself with much effect in one of Miss Vesta Victoria's songs.
"For goodness' sake keep quiet, Maudie," Clara begged. "You'll have the neighbors coming 'round to see whatever's the matter. You have got a cheek."
Sylvia thoroughly enjoyed Maudie's performance and thought she would have a great success. She liked Maudie's smallness and neatness and glittering, dark eyes. Altogether it was a delightful afternoon, and she was sorry to go away.
"Come again," cried Maudie, "before they come back, and we'll have some more."
"Oh, I did feel frightened!" Clara said, when she and Sylvia were hurrying to catch the omnibus back to Lillie Road. "I couldn't enjoy it, not a bit. I felt as if I was in the bath and the door not bolted, though they do say stolen fruit is the sweetest."
When she got home, Sylvia found that her father had returned also, and she held forth on the joys of Maudie Tilt's house.
"Wants to go on the stage, does she?" said Monkley, who was in the room. "Well, you'd better introduce us and we'll see what we can do. Eh, Harry?"
Sylvia approved of this suggestion and eagerly vouched for Maudie's willingness.
"We'll have a little supper-party," said Monkley. "Sil can go round and tell her we're coming."
Sylvia blessed the persistency with which she had worried Clara on the subject of racing; otherwise, bisexual and solitary, she might have been moping in Lillie Road. She hoped that Maudie Tilt would not offer any objections to the proposed party, and determined to point out most persuasively the benefit of Monkley's patronage, if she really meant to go on the stage. However, Maudie was not at all difficult to convince and showed herself as eager for the party as Sylvia herself. She was greatly impressed by her visitor's experience of the stage, but reckoned that no boys should have pinched her legs or given her the broken masks.
"You ought to have punched into them," she said. "Still, I dare say it wasn't so easy for you, not being a girl. Boys are very nasty to one another, when they'd be as nice as anything to a girl."