Alf shook his head.  Emmy had there no opening for her resentment.

“No,” he said, with stubborn loyalty.  “She’s always talked very nice about you.”

“What does she say?” swiftly demanded Emmy.

“I forget....  Saying you had a rough time at home.  Saying it was rough on you.  That you’re one of the best....”

"She said that?” gasped Emmy.  “It’s not like her to say that.  Did she really?  She’s so touchy about me, generally.  Sometimes, the way she goes on, anybody’d think I was the miserablest creature in the world, and always on at her about something.  I’m not, you know; only she thinks it.  Well, I can’t help it, can I?  If you knew how I have to work in that house, you’d be... surprised.  I’m always at it.  The way the dirt comes in—­you’d wonder where it all came from!  And see, there’s Pa and all.  She doesn’t take that into account.  She gets on all right with him; but she isn’t there all day, like I am.  That makes a difference, you know.  He’s used to me.  She’s more of a change for him.”

Alf was cordial in agreement.  He was seeing all the difference between the sisters.  In his heart there still lingered a sort of cherished enjoyment of Jenny’s greater spirit.  Secretly it delighted him, like a forbidden joke.  He felt that Jenny—­for all that he must not, at this moment, mention her name—­kept him on the alert all the time, so that he was ever in hazardous pursuit.  There was something fascinating in such excitement as she caused him.  He never knew what she would do or say next; and while that disturbed and distressed him it also lacerated his vanity and provoked his admiration.  He admired Jenny more than he could ever admire Emmy.  But he also saw Emmy as different from his old idea of her.  He had seen her trembling defiance early in the evening, and that had moved him and made him a little afraid of her; he had also seen her flushed cheeks at the theatre, and Emmy had grown in his eyes suddenly younger.  He could not have imagined her so cordial, so youthful, so interested in everything that met her gaze.  Finally, he found her quieter, more amenable, more truly wifely than her sister.  It was an important point in Alf’s eyes.  You had to take into account—­if you were a man of common sense—­relative circumstances.  Devil was all very well in courtship; but mischief in a girl became contrariness in a domestic termagant.  That was an idea that was very much in Alf’s thoughts during this walk, and it lingered there like acquired wisdom.

“Say she’s going with a sailor!” he suddenly demanded.

“So she told me.  I’ve never seen him.  She doesn’t tell lies, though.”

“I thought you said she did!”

Emmy flinched:  she had forgotten the words spoken in her wild anger, and would have been ashamed to account for them in a moment of greater coolness.

“I mean, if she says he’s a sailor, that’s true.  She told me he was on a ship.  I suppose she met him when she was away that time.  She’s been very funny ever since.  Not funny—­restless.  Anything I’ve done for her she’s made a fuss.  I give her a thorough good meal; and oh! there’s such a fuss about it.  ’Why don’t we have ice creams, and merangs, and wine, and grouse, and sturgeon—­’”