"I couldn't do it," she said. "Oh, it's a dreadful, wicked thing even
to ask me. And only five weeks to-morrow since we married!"

"Lotty, my dear, let us be reasonable." He still spoke quite softly.
"If we are not to go on like other people; if we are to be continually
bothering our heads about honesty, and that rubbish, we shall be
always down in the world. How do other people make money and get on?
By humbug, my dear. By humbug. As for you, a little play-acting is
nothing."

"But I am not the man's daughter, and my own father's alive and well."

"Look here, Lotty. You are always grumbling about the music-halls."

"Well, and good reason to grumble. If you heard those ballet girls
talk, and see how they go on at the back, you'd grumble. As for the
music--" She laughed, as if against her will. "If anybody had told me
six months ago--me, that used to go to the Cathedral Service every
afternoon--that I should be a Lion Masher at a music-hall and go on
dressed in tights, I should have boxed his ears for impudence."

"Why, you don't mean to tell me, Lotty, that you wish you had stuck to
the moldy old place, and gone on selling music over the counter?"

"Well, then, perhaps I do."

"No, no, Lotty; your husband cannot let you say that."

"My husband can laugh and talk with barmaids. That makes him happy."