It was quite three weeks since she left her husband. She went over it all again in her head. Her departure from Berlin! She meant to go straight to Jimmy, first, and give him back that money; only, those Vienna hats, displayed in the shop-windows, those dresses, those boots, when she saw all that, Lily understood that she could not return to London, to her parents, with dingy-looking clothes, after her successes on the continent! Pa and Ma would have laughed in her face.
Lily felt bound to say that she had been most reasonable: three hundred marks for that Vienna dress, which suited her so well; why, Jimmy himself would have approved.
“Let’s see!”
She reckoned on her fingers: forty marks the hat, three hundred the dress; and the underthings, chemises, stays, a silk petticoat, boots ... that came to ... came to ... a week at a hotel in Berlin ... time lost at Hamburg ... the journey from Hamburg to Rotterdam, Harwich and London ... the hotel on arriving, so as to be able to dress before going home: it left her just fifty shillings to play the lady with and buy presents for Pa and Ma. And Jimmy ... Jimmy, who was in London also, due to open at the Hippodrome! And she had sworn that she would give him back that money at once! To quiet her conscience, Lily, under her blankets, took the “counter-oath” of the stage, with her left hand behind her back, the fingers closed over the thumb, that she would repay him the money, most certainly, as soon as she began to earn any.
“Lily! Can I come in, Lily?”
It was Ma, bringing her breakfast and a paper, The Era. Lily gave a quick glance round the room: her skirt was hanging on the peg; the bodice lay, without a crease, over the back of a chair, the hat on top of it, the linen neatly folded: good! She did not look a scarecrow, at any rate! And, sitting up against the pillows, with a napkin on her knees, Lily breakfasted daintily, with her finger-tips:
“Pa, Where’s Pa?” asked Lily. “Tell him to come up.”
“Your Pa has gone out with the apprentices,” said Ma. “He wouldn’t wake you, you looked so tired last night. Here, Lily, some more coffee? Another slice of bread and butter?” continued Ma, spreading it for her.
Lily accepted this as her due, like a lady accustomed to the manners of good society, to having her breakfast brought to her in bed by the maid.