“Well, you can’t scratch Rosemary, either,” he blurted.
Having no answer at hand, Mrs. Peruke preserved what she hoped was a
contemptuous silence; but presently, after endeavouring vainly to digest
the unsavoury fact that if Derry was safe from Roger he was equally safe
from her, she burst into tears of aggravation.
She had caught her husband bending, but, because her hands were tied,
she could not strike. The rod was in pickle, and in pickle the rod must
stay. As for Rosemary . . . .
Roger was speaking.
“I say, don’t cry, Jenny. I can’t bear it.”
“Men are brutes,” sobbed Virginia. “All of them. They just use women
like gloves and then they throw them aside.”
“No, they don’t,” said Roger. “They——”
“They do-o-o. You know it. Look at you and Derry.”
With goggling eyes, Roger begged her to overlook their profligacy.
“We’re fools. That’s all,” he asserted. “Prize fools. But we aren’t
vicious.”
“That’s just what you are,” wailed Virginia. “And you take it out on
mugs like Rosemary and me. I’m not a bit mad with her—I’m simply sorry.
I imagine life with you must be p-purple hell—like mine is with
D-D-Derry. You spend your rotten time playing us up, an’ then when
you’ve played us up you let us down.”
Captain Chase felt inclined to scream.