argument. Sooner or later she would abandon
everything, exhausted, and beaten into impotence. She could bear more,
endure more, than Jenny; she could bear much, so that the story of her
life might be read as one long scene of endurance of things which Jenny
would have struggled madly to overcome or to escape. But having borne
for so long, she could fight only like a cat, her head as it were
turned aside, her fur upon end, stealthily moving paw by paw, always
keeping her front to the foe, but seeking for escape--until the pride
perilously supporting her temper gave way and she dissolved into
incoherence and quivering sobs.

It might have been said roughly that Jenny more closely resembled her
father, whose temperament in her care-free, happy-go-lucky way she
understood very well (better than Emmy did), and that while she carried
into her affairs a necessarily more delicate refinement than his she had
still the dare-devil spirit that Pa's friends had so much admired. She
had more humour than Emmy--more power to laugh, to be detached, to be
indifferent. Emmy had no such power. She could laugh; but she could only
laugh seriously, or at obviously funny things. Otherwise, she felt
everything too much. As Jenny would have said, she "couldn't take a
joke." It made her angry, or puzzled, to be laughed at. Jenny laughed
back, and tried to score a point in return, not always scrupulously.
Emmy put a check on her tongue. She was sometimes virtuously silent.
Jenny rarely put a check on her tongue. She sometimes let it say
perfectly outrageous things, and was surprised at the consequences. For
her it was enough that she had not meant to hurt. She sometimes hurt
very much. She frequently hurt Emmy to the quick, darting in one of her
sure careless stabs that shattered Emmy's self-control. So while they
loved each other, Jenny also despised Emmy, while Emmy in return hated
and was jealous of Jenny, even to the point of actively wishing in
moments of furtive and shamefaced savageness to harm her. That was the
outward difference between the sisters in time of stress. Of their
inner, truer, selves it would be more rash to speak, for in times of
peace Jenny had innumerable insights and emotions that would be forever
unknown to the elder girl. The sense of rivalry, however, was acute: it
coloured every moment of their domestic life, unwinking and incessant.
When Emmy came from the scullery into the kitchen bearing her precious
dish of stew,