Picking Up Tips After dinner, Marmalade watched Jack rehearsing. Chloe had been right. He was dancing well, and very differently from everyone else. Marmalade wasn’t really jealous. It wasn’t in his nature to feel envious of other people’s lives. He would rather make the most of his own. But he was worried. Marmalade could see that while Jack had been soaking up information like a sponge, he himself had been too complacent. To keep ahead, he needed to pick up some tips of his own. Now that he was taking notice of Jack’s skills, Marmalade could see that Jack had been politely listening to all his advice, but only using the parts of it that were useful to him. Marmalade would have blushed, if he were the sort of person who blushed easily! Instead of feeling embarrassed, Marmalade thought carefully. Perhaps he could learn from Jack without seeming to... Big jumps were Marmalade’s favorite part of dancing, and he wanted to put a couple of really spectacular ones into his routine.
