That would be it.  He would pretend that Jenny had chivvied him into taking Em, that he was too noble to refuse to take Em, or to let Em really see point-blank that he didn’t want to take her; but when it came to the pinch he hadn’t been able to screw himself into the truly noble attitude needed for such an act of self-sacrifice.  He had been speechless when a prompt lie, added to the promptitude and exactitude of Jenny’s lie, would have saved the situation.  Not Alf!

“I cannot tell a lie,” sneered Jenny.  “To a woman.  George Washington.  I don’t think!”

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

Thereafter she began to think of Alf.  He had taken her out several times—­not as many times as Emmy imagined, because Emmy had thought about these excursions a great deal and not only magnified but multiplied them.  Nevertheless, Alf had taken Jenny out several times.  To a music hall once or twice; to the pictures, where they had sat and thrilled in cushioned darkness while acrobatic humans and grey-faced tragic creatures jerked and darted at top speed in and out of the most amazingly telescoped accidents and difficulties.  And Alf had paid more than once, for all Pa said.  It is true that Jenny