elves off by a door at the farther end of the hall behind
the stairs, whence there was a short cut through the undulating grounds
to the main road.

Helen ascended to the state bedroom, where there was simply everything
to be done; Georgiana followed her, after having made up the fires, and,
while helping to unpack boxes, offered gossamer hints--fluffy, scarcely
palpable, elusive things--to her mistress that her real ambition had
always been to be a lady's-maid, and to be served at meals by the third,
or possibly the fourth, house-maid. And the hall of Wilbraham Hall was
abandoned for a space to silence and solitude.

Now, the window of Uncle James's little room was a little window that
lived modestly between the double pillars of the portico and the first
window of the great dining-room. Resting from his labours of sorting and
placing, he gazed forth at his domain, and mechanically calculated what
profit would accrue to him if he cut off a slip a hundred and fifty feet
deep along by the Oldcastle-road, and sold it in lots for villas, or
built villas and sold them on ninety-nine-year leases. He was engaged in
his happy exercise of mental arithmetic when he heard footsteps
crunching the gravel, and then a figure, which had evidently come round
by the north side from the back of the Hall, passed across the field of
James's vision. This figure was a walking baptism to the ground it trod.
It dripped water plenteously. It was, in a word, soaked, and its
garments clung to it. Its yellow chamois gloves clung to its hands. It
had no hat. It hesitated in front of the entrance.

Uncle James pushed up his window. "What's amiss, lad?" he inquired, with
a certain blandness of satisfaction.

"I fell into the Water," said Emanuel, feebly, meaning the sheet known
as Wilbraham Water, which diversified the park-like splendours of
Wilbraham Hall.

"How didst manage that?"

"The path is very muddy and slippery just there," said Emanuel.

"Hadn't you better run home as quick as may be?" James suggested.

"I can't," said Emanuel.

"Why not?"

"I've got no hat, and I'm all wet. And everybody in Oldcastle-road will
see me. Can you lend me a hat and coat?"

And all the while he was steadily baptising the gravel.

Uncle James's head disappeared for a moment, and then he threw out of
the window a stiff yellow mackintosh of great age. It was his
rent-collecting mackintosh. It had the excellent quality of matching the
chamois gloves.