ome of that josser? Jimmy was no longer
stage-manager. He had left everything after Lily's flight. He, too, had
flown into a terrible rage when he heard about it ... spoke of Trampy as a
thief in the night ... would have killed him, if he had met him ... and he
was going to star in his turn.

"Singing?" asked Lily.

"No, something to do with the bike."

"What a fool!" thought Lily. "Fancies himself an artiste because he used
to mend my bike for me!"

Jimmy, it seemed, had hired a huge shed and there, all alone, fitted up
some apparatus of a complicated kind. He never went out by day. He worked
and worked. A trick to break your neck at, it appeared, or make your
fortune.

"Those jossers!" exclaimed Lily scornfully.

And what was he going to do on his bike? Nobody knew. There was something
published in the papers, they said. It was something on the back-wheel.

"What rot!"

Lily laughed open-mouthed, laughed with all her muscles, twisting her
hips, splitting her sides, smacking her thighs. What! Jimmy on the
back-wheel! He! He! He cutting twirls, that josser!

"And the troupe?"

The troupe nobody knew about: dispersed, most likely; the troupe, after
all, was Lily. When she went, everything was bound to fall to pieces. Pa
didn't care either; told any one who would listen to him that he was going
to retire to Kennington, that he was well off now ... thousands of pounds
in the bank ... made his fortune ... meant to live on his dividends.

"I knew it," said Lily; "I knew I had made his fortune! Thousands of
pounds, damn it!"

"Lily, don't swear like that!" said Nunkie Fuchs. "It's not right!"

Lily lowered her head, taken aback; excused herself, like a lady who knows
her manners:

"And yet," she said to herself, "if he had had my troubles, that old
rogue, perhaps he would have sworn, too!"

For Trampy was becoming terrible: life was impossible with him. All the
money which Lily earned went on champagne ... and on girls, probably; and
the more she earned the greedier he grew. He wanted money, heaps of money;
Lily had nothing left for herself. Trampy sought out new tricks, invented
balancing-feats, made her practise them, in the morning, on the stage,
with his sleeves turned back and his trousers turned up, absolutely like a
Pa. Lily, accustomed to yield obedience, relapsed under the yoke. Bike in
the morning, bike at the matinee, bike in the evening; and, with that, the
cooking, the washing-up ... and not a