“Miscreant!”
“Don’t call me names. I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not!” he tried to hoist himself up by the coarse black ropes of her loosened hair. Deb resisted fiercely. Jenny, tossing from one side to another, called out petulantly that she was forgotten—it was her party!—and was half off the bed, before another knock sent her flying back to the shelter of the coverlid. The soldier lurched into his special arm-chair and took up the screw-driver—“for a disguise,” he murmured. And Deb, wildly dishevelled, clutched after her expression of calm but anxious best friend to the invalid.
Antonia Verity entered, with a glass of tea and a slice of lemon.
“They thought this might do you good,” to Jenny, who extended a feeble hand, took the glass, raised it shakily to her lips, spilt a few drops, smiled bravely—then, with a sudden gesture of repugnance, handed it to Deb. “Presently, dear ... not now.”
Deb was surprised that she did it so well. Usually Jenny was prone to over-act.
After a single look bestowed upon the perplexing and unexplained presence of a gentleman in shirt-sleeves cooking asparagus over an oil-stove, Antonia’s eyes returned to Jenny:
“I thought you were shamming just now, in the next room. But I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
She lingered a moment, seemingly in expectation. But the atmosphere was feverish and hostile. “I’m sorry,” she repeated; and went.