“Oh, thank you, Mr. McVey! I always enjoy seeing the game so much, and I would be glad to go with you, but the truth is, I have another engagement. Besides, I’m quite sure that Emmie expects you to take her to see it. She has as good as told me so.”
“And, mamma, it was all I could do to keep from catching hold of her then and there and giving her a shaking!” cried Emmie, pouring her sorrows into her mother’s ear a few hours later, when she had come home with Tom from the dance, having had high words with faithless Charley before she left.
“I told him at the door when he followed me out to see me home that I did not desire the company of one who had taken me to the party and then neglected me all the evening for the most outrageous flirt in the world! So I pushed away his arm and called Tom to come with me home,” she said, angrily, between her bitter sobs, for rankling jealousy had stirred poor Emmie’s nature to its deepest depths of pain.
Mrs. Hinton had been confined to her bed several days with a sprained ankle, and her husband being away from home, Emmie shared her mother’s room at night, so she took advantage of her opportunity to relate the whole story of Thea West’s transgressions.
“And there is this thing about it, mamma,” she added, as she undid the rich masses of her thick brown hair and let it fall loosely about her plump white shoulders, “either Thea West has got to leave this house or I will leave it!”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, I only wish your father was here to advise me!” cried her mother, weakly.
“I told Tom the same thing as we were coming home, and he declared I was quite right. He did not blame me for being so determined about it,” pursued Emmie, who always domineered over her weak little mother.
“But, my dear, where is Thea to go, I should like for you to tell me?” she said, with feeble remonstrance.
“To the De Veres, of course; the people papa got her from,” answered Emmie, recklessly. “I’ll bet that man knows all about her, anyway, for papa says, you remember, that Thea took to him the minute she opened her eyes on the train that day, and of course if she had not known him already she would have been timid and huffish as she was with the others.”