Alf and Jenny exchanged angry glances, each bitterly blaming the other.
“Em!” Jenny shouted. “You’re mad!”
“No, I’m not. Let me go! Let me go! He didn’t want me to go. He wanted you. Oh, I knew it. I was a fool to think he wanted me.” Then, looking with a sort of crazed disdain at Jenny, she said coolly, “Well, how is it you’re not ready? Don’t you see your substitute’s waiting! Your land lover!”
“Land!” cried Alf. “Land! A sailor!” He flushed deeply, raising his arms a little as if to ward off some further revelation. Jenny, desperate, had her hands higher than her head, protestingly quelling the scene. In a loud voice she checked them.
“Do ... not ... be ... fools!” she cried. “What’s all the fuss about? Simply because Alf’s a born booby, standing there like a fool! I can’t go. I wouldn’t go—even if he wanted me. But he wants you!” She again seized Emmy, delaying once more Emmy’s mechanical unfastening of the big buttons of her coat. “Alf! Get your coat. Get her out of the house! I never heard such rubbish! Alf, say ... tell her you meant her to go! Say it wasn’t me!”
“I shouldn’t believe him,” Emmy said, clearly. “I know I saw him holding your hand.”
Jenny laughed hysterically.
“What a fuss!” she exclaimed. “He’s been doing palmistry—reading it. All about ... what’s going to happen to me. Wasn’t it, Alf!”
Emmy disregarded her, watching Alf’s too-transparent uneasiness.
“You always were a little lying beast,” she said, venomously. “A trickster.”