“Me? Well I never! I’m not. When—”
They were interrupted unexpectedly by a feeble and jubilant voice.
“More bready butter pudding!” said Pa Blanchard, tipping his plate to show that he had finished.
“Yes, Pa!” For the moment Emmy was distracted from her feud. In a mechanical way, as mothers sometimes, deep in conversation, attend to their children’s needs, she put another wedge of pudding upon the plate. “Well, I say you are,” she resumed in the same strained voice. “And tell me when I go out! I go out shopping. That’s all. But for that, I’m in the house day and night. You don’t care tuppence about Alf—you wouldn’t, not if he was walking the soles off his boots to come to you. You never think about him. He’s like dirt, to you. Yet you go out with him time after time....” Her lips as she broke off were pursed into a trembling unhappy pout, sure forerunner of tears. Her voice was weak with feeling. The memory of lonely evenings surged into her mind, evenings when Jenny was out with Alf, while she, the drudge, stayed at home with Pa, until she was desperate with the sense of unutterable wrong. “Time after time, you go.”
“Sorry, I’m sure!” flung back Jenny, fairly in the fray, too quick not to read the plain message of Emmy’s tone and expression, too cruel to relinquish the sudden advantage. “I never guessed you wanted him. I wouldn’t have done it for worlds. You never said, you know!” Satirically, she concluded, with a studiously careful accent, which she used when she wanted to indicate scorn or innuendo, “I’m sorry. I ought to have asked if I might!” Then, with a dash into grimmer satire: “Why doesn’t he ask you to go with him? Funny his asking me, isn’t it?”
Emmy grew violently crimson. Her voice had a roughness in it. She was mortally wounded.
“Anybody’d know you were a lady!” she said warmly.
“They’re welcome!” retorted Jenny. Her eyes flashed, glittering in the paltry gaslight. “He’s never ... Emmy, I didn’t know you were such a silly little fool. Fancy going on like that ... about a man like him. At your age!”
Vehement glances flashed between them. All Emmy’s jealousy was in her face, clear as day. Jenny drew a sharp breath. Then, obstinately, she closed her lips, looking for a moment like the girl in the sliding window, inscrutable. Emmy, also recovering herself, spoke again, trying to steady her voice.
“It’s not what you think. But I can’t bear to see you ... playing about with him. It’s not fair. He thinks you mean it. You don’t!”