“I guess Emeline will have to wait till the next time,” George said coldly.  “She wouldn’t get much pleasure out of it, leaving me here as sick as I am!”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Mrs. Povey half sang, half laughed.  “Emeline likes a good time, like all the rest of us, George, and it don’t do to keep a pretty girl shut up all the time!”

“Shut up?  She’s never here,” George growled.

“Well, we’ll see!” Mrs. Povey hummed contentedly.  A moment later Emeline came in, wrenching the hooks of her best gown together.  She had her hat on, and looked excited and resolute.

“I forgot I’d promised to go out with the girls, George,” she began.  “You don’t care, do you?  You’ve had your supper, and all Julia’s got to do is get into bed.”

George looked balefully from one to the other.  Mrs. Povey chanced a quick little wink of approval and encouragement at Emeline, and he saw it.

“A lot you forgot!” he said harshly to his wife.  “You’ve been getting ready for the last hour.  Don’t either of you think that you’re fooling me—­I see through it!  I could lay here and die, and a lot you’d care!  You forgot—­ha!”

The blood rushed instantly to Emeline’s face, she turned upon him her ugliest look, and the hand with which she was buttoning her glove trembled.

“Now, I’ll tell you something, Mr. George Page!” said she, in an intense and passionate tone, “there are things I’d rather do than set around this house and hear you tell how sick you are!  You think I’m a white chip in this family, but let me tell you something—­there’s plenty of lovely friends I got who think I’m a fool to keep it up!  I had an offer to go on the stage, not a month ago, from a manager who didn’t even know I was married; didn’t I, Mame?  And if it wasn’t for Julie there—–­”

“You’ve not got anything on me, Em,” George said, breathing hard, his face blood red with anger.  “Do you think that if it wasn’t for this kid, I’d—–­”

“Oh, folks—­folks!” Mrs. Povey said, really concerned.

“Well, I don’t care!” Emeline said, panting.  She crossed the floor, still panting, kissed Julia, and swept from the room.  Mrs. Povey, murmuring some confused farewell, followed her.

Julia climbed out of her big chair.  Like all children, she was frightened by loud voices and domestic scenes; she was glad now that the quarrel was over, and anxious, in a small girl’s fashion, to blot the recent unpleasantness from her father’s mind.

She sat on his knee and talked to him, she sang, she patted his sore neck with sleek, dirty little fingers.  And finally she won him.  George laughed, and entered into her mood.  He thought her a very smart little girl, as indeed she was.  She had a precocious knowledge of the affairs of her mother’s friends, sordid affairs enough, and more sordid than ever when retailed by a child’s fresh mouth.  Julia talked of money trouble, of divorce, of dressmaker’s bills, of diseases; she repeated insolent things that had been said to her in the street, and her insolent replies; her rich, delicious laugh broke out over the memory of the “drunk” that had been thrown out of Cassidy’s.