“These shoes hurt me,” said Mabel. “He knows I can’t go out in these shoes. The heartless brute!”
“If you knew those shoes hurt, why did you put them on?” Sylvia asked, scornfully.
“I was too much upset by Harry’s treatment of me. Oh, whatever shall I do? I’m so miserable.”
Whereupon Mabel collapsed upon the mat and wept black tears, until Henry came and tried to lift her up, begging her not to stay where she might catch cold.
“You know when a jelly won’t set?” Sylvia said, when she was recounting the scene to Monkley afterward. “Well, she was just like a jelly and father simply couldn’t make her stand up on the plate.”
Jimmy laughed sardonically.
These continued altercations between Mabel and Henry led to altercations with their neighbors underneath, who complained of being kept awake at night. The landlord, a fiery little Jew, told them that what between the arrears of rent and the nuisance they were causing to his other tenants he would have to give them notice. Sylvia could never get any money for the purposes of housekeeping except from Jimmy, and when she wanted clothes it was always Jimmy whom she must ask.
“Let’s go away,” she said to him one day. “Let’s leave them here together.”
Monkley looked at her in surprise.
“Do you mean that?”