wn, but no
sooner did Emanuel lay his gloved hand on the steps than the whole
edifice, consisting of steps, Andrew, and ship and ocean tottered and
fell.

"Clumsy fool!" Andrew was distinctly heard to exclaim during his swift
passage to the floor.

The ship and ocean were incurably disintegrated into a mess of coloured
cardboard, linen, and sticks.

And catastrophes even more dreadful might have occurred had it not been
for the calm and wise tact of Helen. Where a person is pleased by an
event, that person can usually, without too much difficulty, exercise a
calm and wise tact upon other persons whom the event has not pleased.
And Helen was delighted by the catastrophe to the ship and ocean. The
ship and ocean had formed no part in her scheme for the decoration of
the hall; her one poor solace had been that the relative proportions of
the hall and of the ship and ocean were such that even a careful
observer might have spent hours in the former without discovering the
latter; on the other hand, some blundering ninny might have lighted
instantly on the ship and ocean, and awkwardly inquired what it was
doing there. So Helen was really enchanted by the ruin. She handled her
men with notable finesse: Uncle James savage and vindictive, but
uncertain upon whom to pour out his anger; Emanuel nursing his injured
innocence; and Andrew Dean nursing his elbow, his head, and vengeance.
She also found a moment in which to calm Georgiana, who had run flying
and hysterical into the hall at the sound of the smash.

Even the steps were broken.

After a time harmony was established, both Uncle James and Emanuel
being, at bottom, men of peace. But it was undeniable that Uncle James
had lost more than gold, and that Emanuel had been touched in a perilous
place--his conceit of himself.

Then Georgiana swept up the ship and ocean, and James retired to his own
little room, where he assumed his Turkish cap, and began to arrange his
personal effects in a manner definite and final, which would be a law
for ever to the servants of Wilbraham Hall.

Left with the two young men, Helen went from triumph to triumph. In
quite a few minutes she had them actually talking to each other. And she
ended by speeding them away together. And by the time they departed each
was convinced that Georgiana's apron, on Helen, was one of the most
bewitching manifestations of the inexpressibly feminine that he had ever
been privileged to see.

They took thems