This was not well said, but Helena thought nothing of it.
'May I walk with you?' she asked, 'and I'll send the carriage home.'
'I shall only be too happy to be with you,' the Dictator said, and he felt what he said. So the carriage was sent on, and Ericson and Helena walked slowly, and for a while silently, on in the direction of the town.
'I have not been only seeing after my poor,' she said, 'I have been doing a little shopping.'
'Shopping here! What on earth can you want to buy in this little place?'
'Well, I persuaded papa into occupying this house here every year, and I very soon found out that you get terribly unpopular if you don't buy something in the town. So I buy all I can in the town.'
'But what do you buy?'
'Oh, well, wine, and tongues, and hams, and gloves.'
'But the wine?'
'I believe some of it is not so awfully bad. Anyhow, one need not drink it. Only the trouble is that I was in the other day at the one only wine merchant's, and while I was ordering something I heard a lady ask for two bottles of some particular claret, and the proprietor called out: "Very sorry, madam, but Sir Rupert Langley carried away all I had left of that very claret, didn't he, William?" And William responded stoutly, and I dare say quite truly, "Oh yes, madam; Sir Rupert, 'e 'as carried all that off." Now I was Sir Rupert.'