d this.

"Oh!" she resumed, with undiminished vivacity, "it's not because I think
your niece isn't good enough for Emanuel; it's because I think she's a
great deal too good! And yet it isn't that, either. The truth is, Mr.
Ollerenshaw, I'm a purely selfish woman. I'm the last person in the
world to stand in the way of my poor stepson getting a better wife than
he deserves. And if the woman chooses to throw herself away on him,
that's not my affair. What I scent danger in is that your stepniece
would find my stepson out. At present she's smitten by his fancy
waistcoat. But she would soon see through the fancy waistcoat--and then
there would be a scandal. If I have not misjudged your stepniece, there
would be a scandal, and I do not think that I have misjudged her. She is
exactly the sort of young woman who, when she had discovered she had
made a mistake, would walk straight out of the house."

"She is!" James agreed with simple heartiness of conviction.

"And Emanuel, having no sense of humour, would leave nothing undone to
force her back again. Imagine the scandal, Mr. Ollerenshaw! Imagine my
position; imagine yours! _Me_, in an affair like that! I won't have
it--that is to say, I won't have it if I can stop it. Now, what can we
do?"

Despite the horror of the situation, he had sufficient loose, unemployed
sentiment (left over from pitying himself) to be rather pleased by her
manner of putting it: What can _we_ do?

But he kept this pleasure to himself.

"Nowt!" he said, drily.

He spoke to her as one sensible person speaks to another sensible person
in the Five Towns. Assuredly she was a very sensible person. He had in
past years credited, or discredited, her with "airs." But here she was
declaring that Helen was too good for her stepson. If his pride had
momentarily suffered, through a misconception, it was now in the full
vigour of its strength.

"You think we can do nothing?" she said, reflectively, and leant forward
on her chair towards him, as if struck by his oracular wisdom.

"What can us do?"

"You might praise Emanuel to her--urge her on." She fixed him with her
eye.

Sensible? She was prodigious. She was the serpent of serpents.

He took her gaze twinkling. "Ay!" he said. "I might. But if I'm to urge
her on, why didna' ye ask her to your house like, and chuck 'em at each
other?"

She nodded several times, impressed by this argument. "You are quite
right, Mr. Ollerenshaw," she admitted.

"It