"My dear girl," said the elder dame, "do not call me Mrs. Prockter. I am Mrs. Ollerenshaw. I am the property that your uncle has been buying at Derby. And he is my sick relative at Nottingham. We preferred to do it like that. We could not have survived engagements and felicitations."
"Oh, you wicked sinners! You—you terrible darlings!" Helen burst out as soon as she could control her voice.
Mrs. Ollerenshaw wept discreetly.
"Bless us! Bless us!" murmured James, not to beseech a benediction, but simply to give the impression (quite false) that, in his opinion, much fuss was being made about nothing.
The new scale of existence was definitely accepted. And in private Mrs. Ollerenshaw entirely agreed with Helen as to the merits of the butler.
After dinner James hurried to his lair to search for a book. The book was not where he had left it, on his original entry into Wilbraham Hall. Within two minutes, the majority of the household staff was engaged in finding that book. Ultimately the butler discovered it; the butler had been reading it.
"Ay!" said James, opening the volume as he stood in front of the rich, expensive fire in the hall. "Dickens—Charles Dickens—that's the chap's name. I couldn't think of it when I was telling you about th' book th' other day. I mun' go on wi" that."
"Couldn't you play us something?" responded his wife.
In the triumph of concertinas over grand pianos, poor Emanuel, lying wounded upstairs, was forgotten. At five minutes to nine Helen stole, unperceived, away from the domestic tableau. She had by no means recovered from her amazement; but she had screened it off by main force in her mind, and she was now occupied with something far more important than the blameless amours of the richest old man in Hillport.
By Wilbraham Water a young man was walking to and fro in the deep autumn night. He wore a cap and a muffler, but no overcoat, and his hands were pushed far down into the pockets of his trousers. He regarded the ground fixedly, and stamped his feet at every step. Then a pale grey figure, with head enveloped in a shawl, and skirts carefully withdrawn from the ground, approached him.