Nocturne | Page 9

abominated bread pudding. Under her breath she adversely commented.
"Oh lor!" she whispered. "Stew and b.p. What a life!"
Emmy, not hearing, but second sighted on such matters, shot a malevolent glance from her place. In an awful voice, intended to be a trifle arch, she addressed her father.
"Bready butter pudding, Pa?" she inquired. The old man whinnied with delight, and Emmy was appeased. She had one satisfied client, at any rate. She cut into the pudding with a knife, producing wedges with a dexterous hand.
"Hey ho!" observed Jenny to herself, tastelessly beginning the work of laborious demolition.
"Jenny thinks it's common. She ought to have the job of getting the meals!" cried Emmy, bitterly, obliquely attacking her sister by talking at her. "Something to talk about then!" she sneered with chagrin, up in arms at a criticism.
"Well, the truth is," drawled Jenny.... "If you want it ... I don't like bread pudding." Somehow she had never said that before, in all the years; but it seemed to her that bread pudding was like ashes in the mouth. It was like duty, or funerals, or ... stew.
"The stuff's got to be finished up!" flared Emmy defiantly, with a sense of being adjudged inferior because she had dutifully 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