Certainly Jimmy found no reason to
doubt it. His manuscripts came back with horrible regularity, not so
much because they were unsuitable but because there was so little space
and so many eager to fill it. Had he been more experienced he would have
known that things are always bad to the majority, whilst the successful
minority has no time to waste in telling others how it is getting on;
but he was raw to the game, and not over-sanguine by nature, so instead
of being elated by such little luck as he did get he was terribly
discouraged when he counted up the total results of a month's hard work.
He had just managed to scrape together the rent of the flat and the
instalment on the hire-purchase furniture, but that had been all. There
was nothing due to him from any of the papers; he was practically
penniless, as well as a little in debt to such of the local tradesmen as
would allow any credit. His own boots were growing uncomfortably thin,
whilst, as for Lalage, he had not been able to buy her a single thing.
Not that she asked him for anything, rather otherwise.

"I can manage," she said with a brave attempt at cheerfulness. "These
shoes will do me for some little time yet, as I hardly ever go out, and
I know you'll get me lots of nice clothes when we grow rich."

But though she tried to encourage him she was not very successful. It is
no easy task to put a new heart into someone else when there is a deadly
fear gripping at your own, and as day after day went by and she saw him
growing thinner, shabbier, more weary and despondent, her own hopes for
the future dwindled down to the vanishing point. Hitherto he had kept
away from his own people, none of whom had seen him since his return
from Northampton; but they were always there in the background, and she
knew that he had only to abandon her and come into line with their ideas
to get his immediate needs supplied and some provision made for his
future in the shape of a steady, respectable occupation. She believed in
his ability as a writer far more than he did himself, but success meant
months, even years, of waiting, and she saw that he had not the strength
to wait. Already his nerve was going and he was trying to steady himself
with whisky. Towards herself he was very loving and gentle, at least
most of the time; but he was quickly becoming too worried to work in
the flat. The sharp knock at the door which heralded the daily visit of
one or other of their small creditor