“Ph! Silly talk!” said Alf, in contemptuous wonder. “I mean to say...”
“Oh, well: you know what flighty girls are. He’s probably a swank-pot. A steward, or something of that sort. I expect he has what’s left over, and talks big about it. But she’s got ideas like that in her head, and she thinks she’s too good for the likes of us. It’s too much trouble to her to be pelite these days. I’ve got the fair sick of it, I can tell you. And then she’s always out...Somebody’s got to be at home, just to look after Pa and keep the fire in. But Jenny—oh dear no! She’s no sooner home than she’s out again. Can’t rest. Says it’s stuffy indoors, and off she goes. I don’t see her for hours. Well, I don’t know ... but if she doesn’t quiet down a bit she’ll only be making trouble for herself later on. She can’t keep house, you know! She can scrub; but she can’t cook so very well, or keep the place nice. She hasn’t got the patience. You think she’s doing the dusting; and you find her groaning about what she’d do if she was rich. ‘Yes,’ I tell her; ‘it’s all very well to do that; but you’d far better be doing something useful,’ I say. ‘Instead of wasting your time on idle fancies.’”
“Very sensible,” agreed Alf, completely absorbed in such a discourse.
“She’s trying, you know. You can’t leave her for a minute. She says I’m stodgy; but I say it’s better to be practical than flighty. Don’t you think so, Alf?”
“Exackly!” said Alf, in a tone of the gravest assent. “Exackly.”
vi
“I mean,” pursued Emmy, “you must have a little common-sense. But she’s been spoilt—she’s the youngest. I’m a little older than she is ... wiser, I say; but she won’t have it.... And Pa’s always made a fuss of her. Really, sometimes, you’d have thought she was a boy. Racing about! My word, such a commotion! And then going out to the millinery, and getting among a lot of other girls. You don’t know who they are—if they’re ladies or not. It’s not a good influence for her....”
“She ought to get out of it,” Alf said. To Emmy it was a ghastly moment.
“She’ll never give it up,” she hurriedly said. “You know, it’s in her blood. Off she goes! And they make a fuss of her. She mimics everybody, and they laugh at it—they think it’s funny to mimic people who can’t help themselves—if they are a bit comic. So she goes; and when she does come home Pa’s so glad to see a fresh face that he makes a fuss of her, too. And she stuffs him up with all sorts of tales—things that never happened—to keep him quiet. She says it gives him something to think about.... Well, I suppose it does. I expect you think I’m very unkind to say such things about my own sister; but really I can’t help seeing what’s under my nose; and I sometimes get so—you know, worked up, that I don’t know how to hold myself. She doesn’t understand what it is to be cooped up indoors all day long, like I am; and it never occurs to her to say ‘Go along, Em; you run out for a bit.’ I have to say to her: ‘You be in for a bit, Jen?’ and then she p’tends she’s always in. And then there’s a rumpus....”
Alf was altogether subdued by this account: it had that degree of intimacy which, when one is in a sentimental mood, will always be absorbing. He felt that he really was getting to the bottom of the mystery known to him as Jenny Blanchard. The picture had verisimilitude. He could see Jenny as he listened. He was seeing her with the close and searching eye of a sister, as nearly true, he thought, as any vision could be. Once the thought, “I expect there’s another story” came sidling into his head; but it was quickly drowned in further reminiscence from Emmy, so that it was clearly a dying desire that he left for Jenny. Had Jenny been there, to fling her gage into the field, Alf might gapingly have followed her, lost again in admiration of her more sparkling tongue and equipments. But in such circumstances the arraigned party is never present. If Jenny had been there the tale could not have been told. Emmy’s virtuous and destructive monologue would not merely have been interrupted: it would have been impossible. Jenny would have done all the talking. The others, all amaze, would have listened with feelings appropriate to each, though with feelings in common unpleasant to be borne.