“She is!” James agreed with simple heartiness of conviction.

“And Emanuel, having no sense of humour, would leave nothing undone to force her back again.  Imagine the scandal, Mr. Ollerenshaw!  Imagine my position; imagine yours! Me, in an affair like that!  I won’t have it—­that is to say, I won’t have it if I can stop it.  Now, what can we do?”

Despite the horror of the situation, he had sufficient loose, unemployed sentiment (left over from pitying himself) to be rather pleased by her manner of putting it:  What can we do?

But he kept this pleasure to himself.

“Nowt!” he said, drily.

He spoke to her as one sensible person speaks to another sensible person in the Five Towns.  Assuredly she was a very sensible person.  He had in past years credited, or discredited, her with “airs.”  But here she was declaring that Helen was too good for her stepson.  If his pride had momentarily suffered, through a misconception, it was now in the full vigour of its strength.

“You think we can do nothing?” she said, reflectively, and leant forward on her chair towards him, as if struck by his oracular wisdom.

“What can us do?”

“You might praise Emanuel to her—­urge her on.”  She fixed him with her eye.

Sensible?  She was prodigious.  She was the serpent of serpents.

He took her gaze twinkling.  “Ay!” he said.  “I might.  But if I’m to urge her on, why didna’ ye ask her to your house like, and chuck ’em at each other?”

She nodded several times, impressed by this argument.  “You are quite right, Mr. Ollerenshaw,” she admitted.

“It’s a dangerous game,” he warned her.

She put her lips together in meditation, and stared into a corner.

“I must think it over”—­she emerged from her reflections.  “I feel much easier now I’ve told you all about it.  And I feel sure that two common-sense, middle-aged people like you and me can manage to do what we want.  Dear me!  How annoying stepsons are!  Obviously, Emanuel ought to marry another fool.  And goodness knows there are plenty to choose from.  And yet he must needs go and fall in love with almost the only sensible girl in the town!  There’s no end to that boy’s foolishness.  He actually wants me to buy Wilbraham Hall, furniture, and everything!  What do you think it’s worth, Mr. Ollerenshaw?”

“Worth?  It’s worth what it’ll fetch.”

“Eight thousand?”

“Th’ land’s worth that,” said James.

“It’s a silly idea.  But he put it into my head.  Now will you drop in one day and see me?”

“No,” said James.  “I’m not much for tea-parties, thank ye.”

“I mean when I’m alone,” she pleaded, delightfully; “so that we can talk over things, and you can tell me what is going on.”

He saw clearly all the perils of such a course, but his instinct seized him again.

“Happen I may look in some morning when I’m round yonder.”