“The idea!” she continued.  “As if I hadn’t looked after mother and kept her in order, and myself, too, for several years!  No.  She wouldn’t marry him and go out there!  And she wouldn’t marry him and stay here!  She actually began to talk all the usual conventional sort of stuff, you know—­about how she had no right to marry again, and she didn’t believe in second marriages, and about her duty to me.  And so on.  You know.  I reasoned with her—­I explained to her that probably she had another thirty years to live.  I told her she was quite young.  She is.  And why should she make herself permanently miserable, and Mr. Bratt, and me, merely out of a quite mistaken sense of duty?  No use!  I tried everything I could.  No use!”

“She was too much for ye?”

“Oh, no!” said Helen, condescendingly.  “I’d made up my mind.  I arranged things with Mr. Bratt.  He quite agreed with me.  He took out a licence at the registrar’s, and one Saturday morning—­it had to be a Saturday, because I’m busy all the other days—­I went out with mother to buy the meat and things for Sunday’s dinner, and I got her into the registrar’s office—­and, well, there she was!  Now, what do you think?”

“What?”

“Her last excuse was that she couldn’t be married because she was wearing her third-best hat.  Don’t you think it’s awfully funny?”

“That’s as may be,” said James.  “When was all this?”

“Just recently,” Helen answered.  “They sailed from Glasgow last Thursday but two.  And I’m expecting a letter by every post to say that they’ve arrived safely.”

“And Susan’s left you to take care of yourself!”

“Now, please don’t begin talking like mother,” Helen said, frigidly.  “I’ve certainly got less to take care of now than I had.  Mother quite saw that.  But what difficulty I had in getting her off, even after I’d safely married her!  I had to promise that if I felt lonely I’d go and join them.  But I shan’t.”

“You won’t?”

“No.  I don’t see myself on a farm in Manitoba.  Do you?”

“I don’t know as I do,” said James, examining her appearance, with a constant increase of his pride in it.  “So ye saw ’em off at Glasgow.  I reckon she made a great fuss?”

“Fuss?”

“Cried.”

“Oh yes, of course.”

“Did you cry, miss?”

“Of course I cried,” said Helen, passionately, sitting up straight.  “Why do you ask such questions?”

“And us’ll never see Susan again?”

“Of course I shall go over and see them,” said Helen.  “I only meant that I shouldn’t go to stop.  I daresay I shall go next year, in the holidays.”

CHAPTER IV

INVITATION TO TEA