Not that he minded!  No, he did not mind.  Although he had no intention whatever of disputing the possession of Mrs. Prockter with her stepson, he did not object to all the implication in Helen’s remarkable tone.  On the contrary, he was rather pleased.  Why should not he sit with a lady in the dark?  Was he not as capable as any man of sitting with a lady in the dark?  He was even willing that Helen should credit him, or pretend to credit him, with having prearranged the dark.

Ah!  People might say what they chose!  But what a dog he might have been had he cared to be a dog!  Here he was, without the slightest preliminary practice, successfully sitting with a lady in the dark, at the first attempt!  And what lady?  Not the first-comer!  Not Mrs. Butt!  Not the Mayoress!  But the acknowledged Queen of Bursley, the undisputed leader of all that was most distinguished in Bursley society!  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.”