"Lord,
I wish I'd never started on this business! Everything's against us--I
knew it would be! We'll give it up. You go off into the back blocks
where you will at least be sure of food and a roof. And I'll go to the
devil in the same old way as quickly as possible."
"Oh, I could shake you!" she cried. "You know quite well I'm not going
to leave you, if we have to live on eleven shillings for the rest of our
lives. It isn't eleven shillings now, either. I gave Jimmy half a crown
to spend at Colombo."
"Fool," he muttered gloomily.
"Who spent fifteen pounds?" she retorted.
"I say, I'm sorry, old girl, but my nerves are a bundle of rags! I've
never had a wife to worry about before--and I can't see how I'm going to
make enough money to make her my wife yet--"
Marcella knew nothing whatever about money. She had a few jewels of her
mother, but it did not occur to her that they were worth money. Louis
had absolutely nothing of value. Guided by past experience his mother
had given him the barest necessities for clothes; his watch and most of
his clothes he had sold before he sailed. What made him so irritable
with Marcella was the knowledge that he could easily get the money by
being drunk. Publicans are proverbially open-handed; most publicans
would have lent him ten pounds to spend in their establishment if he had
thoroughly and courageously drunk and pitched some tale about expecting
money by the English mail.
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