But Pa and Ma thought differently: Jimmy was “somebody,” a man to be considered, right at the top of the profession; she’d have done better to marry him and not her Trampy Wheel-Pad!...
“You must go,” insisted Ma. “Don’t you like going alone? Shall I come with you?”
“Yes, that’s different,” said Lily, who had a certain pride and who felt sure that Jimmy would never mention that thousand marks before a witness.
Her heart beat a little, as she went up the staircase of the Horse Shoe to the third floor, on the left, door 32. At first, she was surprised that he should be there, having read in The Era ... but he might have moved. On the whole, she was not sorry to show herself to Jimmy in her pretty frock, he having seen her last in her room in Berlin, looking ill, unkempt and frightfully ugly. She was not sorry, either, that Ma was with her:
“He’s in love, I suppose,” said Lily. “Everybody makes love to me: why do they, Ma? I’m not a bit pretty, off the stage.”
And she took a mischievous pleasure in enlarging upon her successes and her flirtations, there, on the staircase of the Horse Shoe, with Ma beside her, and no smackings, gee, nor any fear of smackings in the future! What a change since her marriage!
“Yes,” Lily went on, as she read the numbers on the doors—29—“Ma, you ought to see the flowers I get, the chocolates, the sweets”—31—“but all that does not prevent a lady from keeping straight”—32—
Then she gave a stifled cry, her voice stuck in her throat: Trampy, Trampy himself stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, a cigar in his mouth, his hat cocked over one ear; and he looked at her with a bantering air:
“Sorry to disappoint you, Miss Lily. You hoped to find some one else, eh?”
Ma, utterly flabbergasted, had dropped on to a bench in the passage, in the shadow. Trampy did not even see her. Lily was crimson with shame at being caught tripping by Trampy: she could not deny it. She wanted to run away, but, stupefied with surprise, remained where she stood, with dilated pupils, open-mouthed.