James. "It was Mrs. Prockter, I'm thinking."

"Has Mrs. Prockter spoken to you about me and--and Emanuel?"

James hesitated. But the devil-may-care, agreeably vicious Ollerenshaw
impulses were afoot in him, and he did not hesitate long.

"Her has," said he.

"What a ridiculous, fat old woman she is, with her fancies!"

Frankly, James did not like this. He was in a mind to resent it, and
then a certain instinct of self-preservation prompted him to seek cover
in silence. But in any battle of the sexes silence is no cover to the
male, as he ought to have known.

Helen pursued him behind his cover. "I wonder who _she's_ setting her
cap at! I suppose you'll not deny that _she_ wears a cap?"

It was quite a long time since James Ollerenshaw had blushed; but he
blushed at these words. Nothing could have been more foolish, inept, on
his part. Why should he blush because Helen expressed a vague, hostile
curiosity as to the direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap? What had the
direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap to do with him? Yet blush he did. He
grew angry, not--curiously enough--with Helen, but with himself and with
Mrs. Prockter. His anger had the strange effect of making him an arrant
coward. He got up from his chair, having pushed away his cup towards the
centre of the table. As tea was over he was within his rights in doing
so.

"I mun be getting to work again," he muttered.

"Please do wait a minute, uncle," she said, imperiously. "Can't you see
I want to talk to you? Can't you see I've got something on my mind?"

Deliberately challenged in this way, the formidable James was no more
than a sheep to the shearer. Until he met Helen, he had perhaps never
received deliberate, audacious challenges, and even now he was far from
being accustomed to them. So he just stood foolishly near his chair.

"I can't talk to you while you're standing up," she said.

So he sat down. How simple it ought to have been for him to exert
authority over Helen, to tell her fiercely that he had no intention of
being talked to like that, and that if she persisted in such tactics the
front door was at her entire disposal! She had no claim on him. Yet he
ate his humble pie and sat down.

"So they are saying that there is something between Emanuel Prockter and
me, are they?" she recommenced, in a new, mollified voice, a voice that
waved the white flag over her head.

"It wouldna' surprise me to hear as they were," said James.

"And supposing the