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A GREAT CHANGE - Helen with the High Hand
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"Helen Rathbone," said Uncle James one Tuesday afternoon, "have ye been meddling in my cashbox?"
They were sitting in the front room, Helen in a light-grey costume that cascaded over her chair and half the next chair, and James Ollerenshaw in the deshabille of his Turkish cap. James was at his desk. It is customary in the Five Towns, when you feel combative, astonished, or ironic towards another person, to address that other person by his full name.
"You left the key in your cashbox this morning, uncle," said Helen, glancing up from a book, "while you were fiddling with your safe in your bedroom."
He did not like the word "fiddling." It did not suit either his dignity or the dignity of his huge Milner safe.
"Well," he said, "and if I did! I wasn't upstairs more nor five minutes, and th' new servant had na' come! There was but you and me in th' house."
"Yes. But, you see, I was in a hurry to go out marketing, and I couldn't wait for you to come down."
He ignored this remark. "There's a tenpun' note missing," said he. "Don't play them tricks on me, lass; I'm getting an oldish man. Where hast hidden it? I mun go to th' bank." He spoke plaintively.
"My dear uncle," she replied, "I've not hidden your ten-pound note. I wanted some money in a hurry, so I took it. I've spent some of it."
"Spent some of it!" he exclaimed. "How much hast spent?"
"Oh, I don't know. But I make up my accounts every night."
"Lass," said he, staring firmly out of the window, "this won't do. I let ye know at once. This wunna' do." He was determined to be master in his own house. She also was determined to be master in his own house. Conflict was imminent.
"May I ask what you mean, uncle?"
He hesitated. He was not afraid of her. But he was afraid of her dress--not of the material, but of the cut of it. If she had been Susan in Susan's dowdy and wrinkled alpaca, he would have translated his just emotion into what critics call "simple, nervous English"--that is to say, Shakespearean prose. But the aristocratic, insolent perfection of Helen's gown gave him pause.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.
"I merely didn't think of it," she said. "I've been very busy."
"If you wanted money, why didn't you ask me for it?" he demanded.
"I've been here over a week," said she, "and you've given me a pound and a postal order for ten shillings, which I had to ask for. Surely you must have guessed, uncle, that even if I'd put the thirty shillings in the savings bank we couldn't live on the interest of it, and that I was bound to want more. Something like seventy meals have been served in this house since I entered it."
"I gave Mrs. Butt a pound a wik," he observed.
"But think what a good manager Mrs. Butt was!" she said, with the sweetness of a saint.
He was accustomed to distributing satire, but not to receiving it. And, receiving this snowball full in the mouth, he did not quite know what to do with it; whether to pretend that he had received nothing, or to call a policeman. He ended by spluttering. 
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