and I could send 'em on
by th' next steamer?"

"Uncle," she protested, "I do wish you wouldn't be so silly. The idea of
me sailing without my trunks! Why don't you ask me to sail without my
head?"

"All right--all right!" he responded. "But don't snap mine off. Two
second returns to Edinburgh, young man, and I'll thank ye to look slippy
over it."

In the Edinburgh train he could scarcely refrain from laughing. And
Helen, too, seemed more in a humour to accept the disappearance of five
invaluable trunks, full of preciosities, as a facetious sally on the
part of destiny.

He drew out a note-book which he always carried, and did mathematical
calculations.

"That makes twenty-seven pounds eighteen and ninepence as ye owe me," he
remarked.

"What? For railway tickets?"

"Railway tickets, tips, and that twenty-five pounds I lent ye. I'm
making ye a present o' _my_ fares, and dinner, and tea and so forth."

"Twenty-five pounds that you lent me!" she murmured.

"Yes," he said. "Tuesday morning, while I was at my cashbox."

"Oh, _that_!" she ejaculated. "I thought you were giving me that. I
never thought you'd ask me for it again, uncle. I'd completely forgotten
all about it."

She seemed quite sincere in this amazing assertion.

His acquaintance with the ways of women was thus enlarged, suddenly, and
at the merely nominal expense of twenty-five pounds. It was a wondrous
proof of his high spirits and his general contentedness with himself
that he should have submitted to the robbery without a groan.

"What's twenty-five pun'?" he reflected. "There'll be no luggage for her
at Edinburgh; that steamer'll go without her; and then I shall give in.
I shall talk to her about the ways o' Providence, and tell her it's
borne in upon me as she must have Wilbraham Hall if she's in a mind to
stay. I shall save my face, anyhow."

And he further decided that, in case of necessity, in case of Helen at a
later stage pushing her inquiries as to the luggage inconveniently far
he would have to bribe the porter at Shawport to admit to her that he,
the porter, had made a mistake in the labelling.

When they had satisfied themselves that Edinburgh did not contain
Helen's trunks--no mean labour, for the lost luggage office was closed,
and they had to move mountains in order to get it opened on the plea of
extremest urgency--Jimmy Ollerenshaw turned to Susan's daughter, saying
to himself that she must be soothed regardless of cost.