A CALL - Helen with the High Hand

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"Up at Hillport, I hope," Emanuel put in. James could see his mincing imbecile smile through the kitchen wall.

"Who knows?" said Helen.

James returned to the front room. "What's that ye're saying?" he questioned the company.

"I was just saying how quaint and pretty your house is," said Sarah, and she rose to depart. More kissings, flutterings, swishings! Emanuel bowed.

Emanuel followed Miss Swetnam in a few minutes. Helen accompanied him to the gate, where she stayed a little while talking to him. James was in the blackest gloom.

"And now, you dear old thing," said Helen, vivaciously bustling into the house, "you shall have your _tea_. You've behaved like a perfect angel."

And she kissed him on the cheek, very excitedly, as he thought.

She gave him another kidney omelette for his tea. It was even more adorable than the former one. With the taste of it in his mouth, he could not recur to the question of the ten-pound note all at once. When tea was over she retired upstairs, and remained in retirement for ages. She descended at a quarter to eight, with her hat and gloves on. It appeared to him that her eyes were inflamed.

"I'm going out," she said, with no further explanation.

And out she went, leaving the old man, stricken daft by too many sensations, to collect his wits.

He had not even been to the bank!

And the greatest sensation of all the nightmarish days was still in reserve for him. At a quarter-past eight some one knocked at the door. He opened it, being handier than the new servant. He imagined himself ready for anything; but he was not ready for the apparition which met him on the threshold.

Mrs. Prockter, of Hillport, asked to be admitted!

CHAPTER XI

		"Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better." George Eliot