“Jenny, I believe when our gang was singled out for influenza last month, they looked on it as an awful visitation of justice; a sort of plague of Egypt.”
“Perhaps it was. Everyone in the house escaped it except our landing. Do you remember the day I had bolted five aspirin, and the soldier sauntered in, and looked at me, and thought I was dying, and gasped out: ‘Oh, I w-won’t detain you.’ Ass!—but I think it saved my life, I laughed so. And the night I was so awfully bad that Dolph specially got up out of bed to make a cup of Bovril for Manong?”
“Don’t, Jenny! I ... I hated him, that time.”
“Ah, well, I’ve had some jolly enough razzles with old Dolph; he can’t help it when he gets taken this way.” Into Jenny’s tones had crept that note of possessive defence that one hears from the woman in the police-court, shrewishly denying the black eye given her by her “man.” “Poor old boy! he’s gloomier than ever; but then I married him because he reminded me so of Martin Harvey. Dolph says that Manong makes him feel pure again, which is out of my line as I forfeited my purity in his sight by having married him. It sounds a bit mixed up, and I don’t quite see where I come in—with the washing on Saturday morning, I s’pose. Only I’m hanged if I don’t have my little fling too.”
“Does Dolph mind the soldier?”
“Lately he does; haven’t you noticed? yellow with jealousy; tries to keep both eyes on his wife, and not lift them off Manong; wants to confide his woes in me, and take the high moral stride as well. Can’t be done, my lad! But it was quite a rag during the ’flue, Deb; we were all able to take patterns of each other’s dressing-gowns, weren’t we? La llorraine in ermine and her head tied up in a duster was a treat. She and your aunt can tell some smoke-room stories when they get started—my word! Dolph was shocked—afraid Manong would hear.”
“The soldier was bad that one week.”
“Wasn’t he? And wouldn’t let me do much for him either, worse luck. I almost wondered if I should have wired for his wife, off my own bat. But he’d have been so furious.”
“Why? doesn’t he like her?”