The greater part of this talk reached Trampy’s ears. Oh, he could have killed that Jimmy! But he was obliged to hold his tongue. Jimmy had him under his heel, with that crushing lawsuit.
They did not even dare speak of it, so painful was the subject. The little table by the earthenware stove separated them like a wall; and there was one thing always between them: Jimmy. Trampy never mentioned his name now. He would have had too much to say.... And there were continual summonses, always; and lawyers, always; and costs, always. Money melted away, like butter in the sun. Lily was tired of it; and an agony overcame her at the thought of leading a life like that for the rest of her days:
“Oh,” she said, “he’s taking the very bread from our mouths, with his lawsuit! And I haven’t a decent hat to wear.”
“He’ll drive us to the workhouse,” grumbled Trampy, staring before him, with folded arms.
“It’s your fault!” Lily began, but soon stopped: the subject led to a surfeit of quarreling.
But, in her own mind:
“That son of a gun of a Jimmy!” she thought. “All the same, who would ever have believed it of him? Can he guess that all of this falls upon me?”
“Suppose you were to go and see him,” said Trampy, at his wits’ end, one day when he had exhausted himself in stormy explanations with the manager of the Kaiserin.
“I go and see Jimmy?” exclaimed Lily. “What for?”
“To try and arrange things,” replied Trampy, dropping his head. “No one but you could ...”