s she wore). If it be asked where was
the twenty-six pounds so generously given to her by a loving uncle, the
reply is that the whole sum, together with much else, was in the coffers
of Ezra Brunt, the draper and costumier at Hanbridge; and the reply
further is that Helen was in debt. I have hitherto concealed Helen's
tendency to debts, but it was bound sooner or later to come out. And
here it is.

After an adventurous journey by bridge over the North Staffordshire
Railway, and by bridge over the Shropshire Union Canal, and by bridge
over the foaming cataract of the Shaws Brook, and down the fearful
slants of Oldcastle-street, and through the arduous terrific denies of
Oldcastle-road, the van had arrived at the portals of Wilbraham Hall. It
would have been easy, by opening wide the portals, to have introduced
the van and the horses too into the hall of Wilbraham Hall. But this
course was not adopted.

Helen and Georgiana had preceded the van, and they both stood at the
door to receive the goods. Georgiana was in one of Georgiana's aprons,
and Helen also was in one of Georgiana's aprons. Uncle James had
followed the van. He had not let it out of his sight. The old man's
attachment to even the least of his goods was touching, and his
attachment to the greatest of his goods carried pathos into farce. The
greatest of his goods was, apparently, the full-rigged ship and
tempestuous ocean in a glass box which had stood on the table in the
front room of the other house for many years. No one had suspected his
esteem for that glass box and its contents. He had not suspected it
himself until the moment for packing it had come. But he seemed to love
it more than his bits of Spode china or his concertina; and, taking it
with him, he had quitted with a softened regret the quantity of
over-blown blue roses which, in their eternal bloom, had enlivened his
existence during a longer period even than the ship and ocean.

The ship and ocean was the last thing put into the van and the first
thing taken out, and James Ollerenshaw introduced the affair, hugged
against his own breast, into the house of his descendants. The remainder
of the work of transference was relatively unimportant. Two men
accomplished it easily while the horses ate a late dinner. And then the
horses and the van and the men went off, and there was nothing left but
a few wisps of straw and so forth, on the magnificent sweep of gravel,
to indicate that they had ever be