"They lives by their legs, lovey!" she said soothingly--"It's only
their legs that gits them their bread and butter, and I s'pose
they're bound to show 'em off. Don't you worry 'ow they gits done!
You'll never come across any of 'em!"

Innocent shut her sensitive mouth in a firm, proud line.

"I hope not!" she said.

And she felt as if she had almost wronged the sanctity of the
little study which had formerly belonged to the Sieur Amadis by
allowing such pictures to enter it. Of course she knew that
dancers and actors, both male and female, existed,--a whole troupe
of them came every year to the small theatre of the country town
which, by breaking out into an eruption of new slate-roofed houses
among the few remaining picturesque gables and tiles of an earlier
period, boasted of its "advancement" some eight or ten miles away;
but her "father," as she had thought him, had an insurmountable
objection to what he termed "gadding abroad," and would not allow
her to be seen even at the annual fair in the town, much less at
the theatre. Moreover, it happened once that a girl in the village
had run away with a strolling player and had gone on the stage,--
an incident which had caused a great sensation in the tiny wood-
encircled hamlet, and had brought all the old women of the place
out to their doorsteps to croak and chatter, and prognosticate
terrible things in the future for the eloping damsel. Innocent
alone had ventured to defend her.

"If she loved the man she was right to go with him," she said.