Helen with the High Hand | Page 7

Aynsley-street."
"Oh! that's years ago!" said Helen, shocked by his ignorance. "We've lived in Sneyd-road for years--years."
"I'll not deny it," said James.
"The great fault of our house," Helen proceeded, "was that mother daren't stir out of it on cattle-market days."
"Why not?"
"Cows!" said Helen. "Mother simply can't look at a cow, and they were passing all the time."
"She should ha' been thankful as it wasn't bulls," James put in.
"But I mean bulls too!" exclaimed Helen. "In fact, it was a bull that led to it."
"What! Th' farmer saved her from a mad bull, and she fell in love with him? He's younger than her, I lay!"
"How did you know that?" Helen questioned. "Besides, he isn't. They're just the same age."
"Forty-four?" Perceiving delicious danger in the virgin's face, James continued before she could retort, "I hope Susan wasn't gored?"
"You're quite wrong. You're jumping to conclusions," said Helen, with an air of indulgence that would have been exasperating had it not been enchanting. "Things don't happen like that except in novels."
"I've never read a novel in my life," James defended himself.
"Haven't you? How interesting!"
"But I've known a woman knocked down by a bull."
"Well, anyhow, mother wasn't knocked down by a bull. But there was a mad bull running down the street; it had escaped from the market. And Mr. Bratt was walking home, and the bull was after him like a shot. Mother was looking out of the window, and she saw what was going on. So she rushed to the front door and opened it, and called to Mr. Bratt to run in and take shelter. And they only just got the door shut in time."
"Bless us!" muttered James. "And what next?"
"Why, I came home from school and found them having tea together."
"And ninety year between them!" James reflected.
"Then Mr. Bratt called every week. He was a widower, with no children."
"It couldn't ha' been better," said James.
"Oh yes, it could," said Helen. "Because I had the greatest difficulty in marrying them; in fact, at one time I thought I should never do it. I'm always in the right, and mother's always in the wrong. She's admitted that for years. She's had to admit it. Yet she would go her own way. Nothing would ever cure mother."
"She used to talk just like that of your grandfather," said James. "Susan always reckoned as she'd got more than her fair share of sense."
"I don't think she thinks that now," said Helen, calmly, as if to say: "At any rate I've cured her of that." Then she went on: "You see, Mr. Bratt had sold his farm--couldn't make it pay--and he was going out to Manitoba. He said he would stop in England. Mother said she wouldn't let him stop in England where he couldn't make a farm pay. She was quite right there," Helen admitted, with careful justice. "But then she said she wouldn't marry him and go out to Manitoba, because of leaving me alone here to look after myself! Can you imagine such a reason?"
James merely raised his head quickly several times. The gesture meant whatever Helen preferred that it should mean.
"The idea!" she continued. "As if I hadn't looked after mother and kept her in order, and myself, too, for several years! No. She wouldn't marry him and go out there! And she wouldn't marry him and stay here! She actually began to talk all the usual conventional sort of stuff, you know--about how she had no right to marry again, and she didn't believe in second marriages, and about her duty to me. And so on. You know. I reasoned with her--I explained to her that probably she had another thirty years to live. I told her she was quite young. She is. And why should she make herself permanently miserable, and Mr. Bratt, and me, merely out of a quite mistaken sense of duty? No use! I tried everything I could. No use!"
"She was too much for ye?"
"Oh, no!" said Helen, condescendingly. "I'd made up my mind. I arranged things with Mr. Bratt. He quite agreed with me. He took out a licence at the registrar's, and one Saturday morning--it had to be a Saturday, because I'm busy all the other days--I went out with mother to buy the meat and things for Sunday's dinner, and I got her into the registrar's office--and, well, there she was! Now, what do you think?"
"What?"
"Her last excuse was that she couldn't be married because she was wearing her third-best hat. Don't you think it's awfully funny?"
"That's as may be," said James. "When was all this?"
"Just recently," Helen answered. "They sailed from Glasgow last Thursday but two. And I'm expecting a letter by every post to say that they've arrived safely."
"And Susan's left you to take care of yourself!"
"Now, please don't begin talking like mother,"