“Yes.  But, you see, I was in a hurry to go out marketing, and I couldn’t wait for you to come down.”

He ignored this remark.  “There’s a tenpun’ note missing,” said he.  “Don’t play them tricks on me, lass; I’m getting an oldish man.  Where hast hidden it?  I mun go to th’ bank.”  He spoke plaintively.

“My dear uncle,” she replied, “I’ve not hidden your ten-pound note.  I wanted some money in a hurry, so I took it.  I’ve spent some of it.”

“Spent some of it!” he exclaimed.  “How much hast spent?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  But I make up my accounts every night.”

“Lass,” said he, staring firmly out of the window, “this won’t do.  I let ye know at once.  This wunna’ do.”  He was determined to be master in his own house.  She also was determined to be master in his own house.  Conflict was imminent.

“May I ask what you mean, uncle?”

He hesitated.  He was not afraid of her.  But he was afraid of her dress—­not of the material, but of the cut of it.  If she had been Susan in Susan’s dowdy and wrinkled alpaca, he would have translated his just emotion into what critics call “simple, nervous English”—­that is to say, Shakespearean prose.  But the aristocratic, insolent perfection of Helen’s gown gave him pause.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

“I merely didn’t think of it,” she said.  “I’ve been very busy.”

“If you wanted money, why didn’t you ask me for it?” he demanded.

“I’ve been here over a week,” said she, “and you’ve given me a pound and a postal order for ten shillings, which I had to ask for.  Surely you must have guessed, uncle, that even if I’d put the thirty shillings in the savings bank we couldn’t live on the interest of it, and that I was bound to want more.  Something like seventy meals have been served in this house since I entered it.”

“I gave Mrs. Butt a pound a wik,” he observed.

“But think what a good manager Mrs. Butt was!” she said, with the sweetness of a saint.

He was accustomed to distributing satire, but not to receiving it.  And, receiving this snowball full in the mouth, he did not quite know what to do with it; whether to pretend that he had received nothing, or to call a policeman.  He ended by spluttering.

“It’s easy enough to ask for money when you want it,” he said.

“I hate asking for money,” she said.  “All women do.”

“Then am I to be inquiring every morning whether you want money?” he questioned, sarcastically.

“Certainly, uncle,” she answered.  “How else are you to know?”

Difficult to credit that that girl had been an angel of light all the week, existing in a paradise which she had created for herself, and for him!  And now, to defend an action utterly indefensible, she was employing a tone that might be compared to some fiendish instrumental device of a dentist.

But James Ollerenshaw did not wish his teeth stopped, nor yet extracted.  He had excellent teeth.  And, in common with all men who have never taken thirty consecutive repasts alone with the same woman, he knew how to treat women, how to handle them—­the trout!