habituated herself to the appreciation of bread pudding. "You might think of that! What else am I to do?"

"That's just it, old girl. Just why I don't like it. I just hate to feel I'm finishing it up. Same with stew. I know it's been something else first. It's not fresh. Same old thing, week in, week out. Finishing up the scraps!"

"Proud stomach!" A quick flush came into Emmy's cheeks; and tears started to her eyes.

"Perhaps it is. Oh, but Em! Don't you feel like that yourself…. Sometimes? O-o-h!…" She drawled the word wearily. "Oh for a bit more money! Then we could give stew to the cat's-meat man and bread to old Thompson's chickens. And then we could have nice things to eat. Nice birds and pastry … and trifle, and ices, and wine…. Not all this muck!"

"Muck!" cried Emmy, her lips seeming to thicken. "When I'm so hot…. And sick of it all! You go out; you do just exactly what you like…. And then you come home and…." She began to gulp. "What about me?"

"Well, it's just as bad for both of us!" Jenny did not think so really; but she said it. She thought Emmy had the bread and butter pudding nature, and that she did not greatly care what she ate as long as it was not too fattening. Jenny thought of Emmy as born for housework and cooking—of stew and bread puddings. For herself she had dreamed a nobler destiny, a destiny of romance, of delicious unknown things, romantic and indescribably exciting. She was to have the adventures, because she needed them. Emmy didn't need them. It was all very well for Emmy to say "What about me!" It was no business of hers what happened to Emmy. They were different. Still, she repeated more confidently because there had been no immediate retort:

"Well, it's just as bad for both of us! Just as bad!"

"'Tisn't! You're out all day—doing what you like!"

"Oh!" Jenny's eyes opened with theatrical wideness at such a perversion of the facts. "Doing what I like! The millinery!"

"You are! You don't have to do all the scraping to make things go round, like I have to. No, you don't! Here have I … been in this … place, slaving! Hour after hour! I wish you'd try and manage better. I bet you'd be thankful to finish up the scraps some way—any old way! I'd like to see you do what I do!"

Momentarily Jenny's picture of Emmy's nature (drawn accommodatingly by herself in order that her own might be differentiated and exalted by any comparison) was shattered. Emmy's vehemence had thus the temporary effect of creating a fresh reality out of a common idealisation of circumstance. The legend would re-form later, perhaps, and would continue so to re-form as persuasion flowed back upon Jenny's egotism, until it crystallised hard and became unchallengeable; but at any rate for this instant Jenny had had a glimmer of insight into that tamer discontent and rebelliousness that encroached like a canker upon Emmy's originally sweet nature. The shock of impact with unpleasant conviction made Jenny hasten to dissemble her real belief in Emmy's born inferiority. Her note was changed from one of complaint into one of persuasive entreaty.

"It's not that. It's not that. Not at all. But wouldn't you like a change from stew and bread pudding yourself? Sometimes, I mean. You seem to like it all right." At that ill-considered suggestion, made with unintentional savageness, Jenny so worked upon herself that her own colour rose high. Her temper became suddenly unmanageable. "You talk about me being out!" she breathlessly exclaimed. "When do I go out? When! Tell me!"

"O-o-h! I like that! What about going to the pictures with Alf Rylett?" Emmy's hands were, jerking upon the table in her anger. "You're always out with him!"

"Me? Well I never! I'm not. When—"

They were interrupted unexpectedly by a feeble and jubilant voice.

"More bready butter pudding!" said Pa Blanchard, tipping his plate to show that he had finished.

"Yes, Pa!" For the moment Emmy was distracted from her feud. In a mechanical way, as mothers sometimes, deep in conversation, attend to their children's needs, she put another wedge of pudding upon the plate. "Well, I say you are," she resumed in the same strained voice. "And tell me when I go out! I go out shopping. That's all. But for that, I'm in the house day and night. You don't care tuppence about Alf—you wouldn't, not if he was walking the soles off his boots to come to you. You never think about him. He's like dirt, to you. Yet you go out with him time after time…." Her lips as she broke off were pursed into a trembling unhappy pout, sure forerunner of tears. Her voice was weak with feeling. The memory of lonely evenings surged into her mind, evenings when Jenny was out with Alf, while she, the drudge, stayed at home with Pa, until she was desperate with the sense of unutterable wrong. "Time after time, you go."

"Sorry, I'm sure!" flung back Jenny, fairly in the fray, too quick not to read the plain message of Emmy's tone and expression, too cruel to relinquish the sudden advantage. "I never guessed you wanted him. I wouldn't have done it for worlds. You never said, you know!" Satirically, she concluded, with a studiously careful accent, which she used when she wanted to indicate scorn or innuendo, "I'm sorry. I ought to have asked if I might!" Then, with a dash into grimmer satire: "Why doesn't he ask you to go with him? Funny his asking me, isn't it?"

Emmy grew violently crimson. Her voice had a roughness in it. She was mortally wounded.

"Anybody'd know you were a lady!" she said warmly.

"They're welcome!" retorted Jenny. Her eyes flashed, glittering in the paltry gaslight. "He's never … Emmy, I didn't know you were such a silly little fool. Fancy going on like that … about a man like him. At your age!"

Vehement glances flashed between them. All Emmy's jealousy was in her face, clear as day. Jenny drew a sharp breath. Then, obstinately, she closed her lips, looking for a moment like the girl in the sliding window, inscrutable. Emmy, also recovering herself, spoke again, trying to steady her voice.

"It's not what you think. But I can't bear to see you … playing about with him. It's not fair. He thinks you mean it. You don't!"

"Course I don't. I don't mean anything. A fellow like that!" Jenny laughed a little, woundingly.

"What's the matter with him?" Savagely, Emmy betrayed herself again. She was trembling from head to foot, her mind blundering hither and thither for help against a quicker-witted foe. "It's only you he's not good enough for," she said passionately. "What's the matter with him?"

Jenny considered, her pale face now deadly white, all the heat gone from her cheeks, though the hard glitter remained in her eyes, cruelly indicating the hunger within her bosom.

"Oh, he's all right in his way," she drawlingly admitted. "He's clean. That's in his favour. But he's quiet … he's got no devil in him. Sort of man who tells you what he likes for breakfast. I only go with him … well, you know why, as well as I do. He's all right enough, as far as he goes. But he's never on for a bit of fun. That's it: he's got no devil in him. I don't like that kind. Prefer the other sort."

During this speech Emmy had kept back bitter interruptions by an unparalleled effort. It had seemed as though her fury had flickered, blazing and dying away as thought and feeling struggled together for mastery. At the end of it, however, and at Jenny's declared preference for men of devil, Emmy's face hardened.

"You be careful, my girl," she prophesied with a warning