“Where shouldst hang it, Master Prockter?” James genially asked.

“Hang it, uncle?” exclaimed Helen.  “Are you going to hang it?  Aren’t you going to keep it on the table in your own room?”

She was hoping that it might occupy a position not too prominent.  She did not intend it to be the central decorative attraction of the palace.

“It ought to be hung,” said Emanuel.  “See, here are the little iron things for the nails.”

This gift of observation pleased James.  Emanuel was indeed beginning to show quite an intelligent interest in the ship and ocean.

“Of course it must be hung,” said he.

He was very human, was Jimmy Ollerenshaw.  For at least twenty-five years he had possessed the ship and ocean, and cherished it, always meaning one day to hang it against the wall as it deserved.  And yet he had never arrived at doing so, though the firm resolution to do so had not a whit weakened in his mind.  And now he was absolutely decided, with the whole force of his will behind him, to hang the ship and ocean at once.

“There! under the musicians’ gallery wouldn’t be a bad place, would it, Mr. Ollerenshaw?” Emanuel suggested, respectfully.

James trained his eye on the spot.  “The very thing, lad!” said he, with enthusiasm.

“Lad!” Helen had not recovered from a private but extreme astonishment at this singular mark of paternal familiarity to Emanuel when there was another and a far louder ring at the door.

Georgiana minced and tripped out of her retreat, and opened the majestic portal to a still greater surprise for Helen.  The ringer was Mr. Andrew Dean—­Mr. Andrew Dean with his dark, quasi-hostile eyes, and his heavy shoulders, and his defiant, suspicious bearing—­Mr. Andrew Dean in workaday clothes and with hands that could not be called clean.  Andrew stared about him like a scout, and then advanced rapidly to Helen and seized her hand, hurting it.

“I was just passing,” said he, in a hoarse voice.  “I expected you’d be in a bit of a mess, so I thought I might be useful.  How d’ye do, Mr. Ollerenshaw?” And he hurt James’s hand also.

“It’s very kind of you,” Helen remarked, flushing.

“How do, Prockter?” Andrew jerked out at Emanuel, not taking his hand.

This abstention on Andrew’s part from physical violence was capable of two interpretations.  The natural interpretation was that Andrew’s social methods were notoriously casual and capricious.  The interesting interpretation was that a failure of the negotiations between Emanuel and Andrew for a partnership—­a failure which had puzzled Bursley—­had left rancour behind it.

Emanuel, however, displayed no symptom of being disturbed.  His blandness remained intact.  Nevertheless, the atmosphere was mysteriously electric.  Helen felt it to be so, and an atmosphere which is deemed to be electric by even one person only, ipso facto, is electric.  As for James Ollerenshaw, he was certainly astonished by the visit of Andrew Dean; but, being absorbed in the welfare of his ship and ocean, he permitted his astonishment to dissolve in a vague satisfaction that, anyhow, Helen’s unexplained quarrel with Andrew Dean was really at an end.  This call was assuredly Andrew’s way of expiatory repentance.