white hands flashed in the wan light as she quickly threaded her needle
and knotted the silk.




CHAPTER III: ROWS


i

After Emmy had hurried out of the room to change her dress, Alf stood,
still apparently stupefied at the unscrupulous rush of Jenny's feminine
tactics, rubbing his hand against the back of his head. He looked
cautiously at Pa Blanchard, and from him back to the mysterious unknown
who had so recently defeated his object. Alf may or may not have
prepared some kind of set speech of invitation on his way to the house.
Obviously it is a very difficult thing, where there are two girls in a
family, to invite one of them and not the other to an evening's orgy. If
it had not previously occurred to Alf to think of the difficulty quite
as clearly as he was now being made to do, that must have been because
he thought of Emmy as imbedded in domestic affairs. After all, damn it,
as he was thinking; if you want one girl it is rotten luck to be fobbed
off with another. Alf knew quite well the devastating phrase, at one
time freely used as an irresistible quip (like "There's hair" or "That's
all right, tell your mother; it'll be ninepence") by which one suggested
disaster--"And that spoilt his evening." The phrase was in his mind,
horrible to feel. Yet what could he have done in face of the direct
assault? "_Must_ be a gentleman." He could hardly have said, before
Emmy: "No, it's _you_ I want!" He began to think about Emmy. She was all