Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.)

es one Tuesday afternoon, "have

r, and James Ollerenshaw in the deshabille of his Turkish cap. James was at his desk. It is customary in the Five Town

cle," said Helen, glancing up from a book, "while

It did not suit either his dignity or

s more nor five minutes, and th' new servant had

rry to go out marketing, and I co

. "Don't play them tricks on me, lass; I'm getting an oldish man.

n your ten-pound note. I wanted some money in

" he exclaimed. "H

But I make up my ac

now at once. This wunna' do." He was determined to be master in his own house

what you me

been Susan in Susan's dowdy and wrinkled alpaca, he would have translated his just emotion into what critics call "simple, ne

you tell me?

k of it," she said. "

why didn't you ask m

r. 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 in

tt a pound a wi

r Mrs. Butt was!" she said, w

is snowball full in the mouth, he did not quite know what to do with it; whether to

ask for money when

r money," she sai

y morning whether you want mone

she answered. "How e

which she had created for herself, and for him! And now, to defend an action utterly indefensible

lent teeth. And, in common with all men who have never taken thirty consecutive repas

all his body. Helen r

as destined to remain a fragment. It goes down to history as a perfect fragment, li

d James's gate and knocked at James's front door. She could not be a relative of a tenant. James was closely acquainted with all his tenants,

was Sarah Swetnam, eldest child of the large and tumultuously intellectual Swetnam family that lived in a largish house

Rathbon

ecstatic cry behind him: "Sally!"

es, frills, hat, parasol, veil, and whirling flowers; also scent. They kissed, through Sally's veil first, and then she lifted the veil, and four vermilion lips clung together. Sally was even taller than Helen, with a solid waist; and older, more brazen. They both sat down. Fashionable women have a manner of sitting down quite different from that of ordinary women, such as the wives of James's ten

conversation as a duck into water. In three minutes Helen had told Sarah Swetnam everything about her leaving the school, and about her establishment w

ing to a few hundred books that were stacked in a corner. "How lovely! You remember y

e I'll find it for

They were talking just as if James Ollerenshaw had been in Timbucto

o have Nell like this!" She add

re without a sign. Of the Swetnam family, James "knew" the father alone, and him slightl

hange for you,"

agreed; "