But it must stop.

Then he thought of the cooking.  His mouth remembered its first taste of the incomparable kidney omelette.  What an ecstasy!  Still, a ten-pound note for even a kidney omelette jarred on the fineness of his sense of values.

A feminine laugh—­Helen’s—­came down the narrow stairs and through the kitchen....  No, the whole house was altered, with well-bred, distinguished women’s laughter floating about the stairs like that.

He called upon his lifelong friend and comforter—­the concertina.  That senseless thing of rose-wood, ivory, ebony, mother-of-pearl, and leather was to him what a brother, a pipe, a bull terrier, a trusted confidant, might have been to another James.  And now, in the accents of the Hallelujah Chorus, it yielded to his squeezings the secret and sublime solace which men term poetry.

Then there was a second, and equally imperious, knock at the door.

He loosed his fingers from his friend, and opened the door.

Mr. Emanuel Prockter stood on the doorstep.  Mr. Emanuel Prockter wore a beautiful blue suit, with a white waistcoat and pale gold tie; yellow gloves, boots with pointed toes, a glossy bowler hat, a cane, and an eyeglass.  He was an impeccable young man, and the avowed delight of his tailor, whose bills were paid by Mrs. Prockter.

“Is Miss Rathbone at home?” asked Emanuel, after a cough.

“Helen?”

“Ye-es.”

“Ay,” said James, grimly.  “Her’s quite at home.”

“Can I see her?”

James opened more widely the door.  “Happen you’d better step inside,” said he.

“Thanks, Mr. Ollerenshaw.  What—­er—­fine weather we’re having!”

James ignored this quite courteous and truthful remark.  He shut the door, went into the kitchen, and called up the stairs:  “Helen, a young man to see ye.”

In the bedroom, Helen and Sarah Swetnam had exhausted the Brunt hat, and were spaciously at sea in an enchanted ocean of miscellaneous gossip such as is only possible between two highly-educated women who scorn tittle-tattle.  Helen had the back bedroom; partly because the front bedroom was her uncle’s, but partly also because the back bedroom was just as large as and much quieter than the other, and because she preferred it.  There had been no difficulty about furniture.  Even so good a landlord as James Ollerenshaw is obliged now and then to go to extremes in the pursuit of arrears of rent, and the upper part of the house was crowded with choice specimens of furniture which had once belonged to the more magnificent of his defaulting tenants.  Helen’s bedroom was not “finished”; nor, since she regarded it as a temporary lodging rather than a permanent habitation, was she in a mind to finish it.  Still, with her frocks dotted about, the hat on the four-post bed, and her silver-mounted brushes and manicure tools on the dressing-table, it had a certain stylishness.  Sarah shared the bed with the hat.  Helen knelt at a trunk.