Yes; but then, said her secret complacency, preening itself, and
suggesting that possibly a moment or two of satisfied pity might be at
this point in place, he'd really wanted to take Jenny. He had taken the
tickets because he had wanted to be in Jenny's company for the evening.
Not Emmy's. There was all the difference. If you wanted a cream bun and
got fobbed off with a scone! There was something in that. Jenny was
rather flattered by her happy figure. She even excitedly giggled at the
comparison of Emmy with a scone. Jenny did not like scones. She thought
them stodgy. She had also that astounding feminine love of cream buns
which no true man could ever acknowledge or understand. So Emmy became a
scone, with not too many currents in it. Jenny's fluent fancy was
inclined to dwell upon this notion. She a little lost sight of Alf's
grievance in her pleasure at the figures she had drawn. Her mind was
recalled with a jerk. Now: what was it? Alf had wanted to take
her--Jenny. Right! He had taken Emmy. Because he had taken Emmy, he had
a grievance. Right! But against whom? Against Emmy? Certainly not.
Against himself? By no means. Against Jenny? A horribly exulting and yet
nervously penitent little giggle shook Jenny at her inability to answer
this point as she had answered the others. For Alf _had_ a grievance
against Jenny, and she knew it. No amount of ingenious thought could
hoodwink her sense of honesty for more than a debater's five minutes. No
Alf had a grievance. Jenny could not, in strict privacy, deny the fact.
She took refuge in a shameless piece of bluster.

"Well, after all!" she cried, "he had the tickets given to him. It's not
as though they _cost_ him anything! So what's all the row about?"


ii