First he would yield to a right honourable gentleman; then no one would yield to him; then he would yield to no admiration, and at last she gave it up in despair.
A woman of less tenacity would have abandoned her design; not so Mary Smith. She discovered with careful art that there was no reason why a Warden of the Court of Dowry should speak in the House at all; he might hold his post for three years and do no more than answer questions, leaving to a subordinate the duty of speaking upon those very rare public Bills, which, however distantly, concerned his office.
She had already made him a name; she was determined not to destroy it by following up this false scent of training him to public speaking. At last, as the month of May was drawing to a close, she determined to put him upon the rails.
Dolly and she were agreed. Perhaps Dimmy would need to be persuaded; he was naturally modest, and what was more he would very certainly be afraid, but still more certainly he wanted money most abominably.
When the day came for him to receive his great illumination she called him to her once more, and once more he found her alone. She lunched him first, and gave him a wine of which she knew he could drink in moderation, for she felt he would need courage; she let him drink his coffee, she lit her own tiny cigar, and at last she said:
“Dimmy, what does it take you to live?”
“I don’t know,” said Dimmy with some terror in his eyes.
Mary Smith looked at him a little quizzically. He did not like those looks though he was fond of her. It made him feel like an animal.
“Dimmy,” she said, “could you and Sudie manage it on seven thousand a year, or say on six thousand?”
Dimmy thought long and painfully. For him there were but two scales of income, the poor and the rich. In the days when it was such a bore to raise a sovereign, he was poor. For nearly two years with an unlimited capital behind him, and about twenty thousand a year for his wife to spend, he had considered himself positively and fixedly among the rich. He had felt comfortable: he had had elbow room. Six thousand pounds puzzled him: it was neither one thing nor the other. A brilliant thought struck him.