to 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