And no difficulty
about it either! And she had squeezed his hand. She had continued to
squeeze it. She, in her rich raiment, with her fine ways, and her
correct accent, had squeezed the hand of Jimmy Ollerenshaw, with his
hard old clothes and his Turkish cap, his simple barbarisms, his lack of
style, and his uncompromising dialect! Why? Because he was rich? No.
Because he was a man, because he was the best man in Bursley, when you
came down to essentials.

So his thoughts ran.

His interest in Helen's heart had become quite a secondary interest, but
she recalled him to a sense of his responsibilities as great-stepuncle
of a capricious creature like her.

"What are you and Mrs. Prockter talking about?" she questioned him in a
whisper, holding the candle towards his face and scrutinising it, as
seemed to him, inimically.

"Well," he said, "if you must know, about you and that there Andrew
Dean."

She made a brusque movement. And then she beckoned him to follow her
along the corridor, out of possible earshot of Mrs. Prockter.

"Do you mean to say, uncle," she demanded, putting the candle down on a
small table that stood under a large oil-painting of Joshua and the Sun
in the corridor, "that you've been discussing my affairs with Mrs.
Prockter?"

He saw instantly that he had not been the sage he imagined himself to
be. But he was not going to be bullied by Helen, or any other woman
younger than Mrs. Prockter. So he stiffly brazened it out.

"Ay!" he said.

"I never heard of such a thing!" she exploded, but still whispering.

"You said as I must help ye, and I'm helping ye," said he.

"But I didn't mean that you were to go chattering about me all over
Bursley, uncle," she protested, adopting now the pained, haughty, and
over-polite attitude.

"I don't know as I've been chattering all over Bursley," he rebutted
her. "I don't know as I'm much of a chatterer. I might name them as
could give me a start and a beating when it comes to talking the nose
off a brass monkey. Mrs. Prockter came in to inquire about what had
happened here this afternoon, as well she might, seeing as Emanuel went
home with a couple o' gallons o' my water in his pockets. So I told her
all about it. Her's a very friendly woman. And her's promised to do what
her can for ye."

"How?"

"Why, to get Andrew Dean for ye, seeing as ye're so fixed on him, wi' as
little gossip as maybe."

"Oh! So Mrs. Prockter has kindly consented to get Andrew