“There you are!” she said, putting a blue-green paper into his hand.  “Ever seen one of these before?”

It was the ticket for the steamer.

This staggered him.  A sensible, determined woman, who disappears to buy a steamer-ticket, may be expected to reappear with a steamer-ticket.  And yet it staggered him.  He could scarcely believe it.  She was going, then!  She was going!  It was inevitable now.

“The boat leaves the Clyde at ten in the morning,” she said, resuming possession of the paper, “so we must go to Glasgow on Friday, and stop the night at an hotel.”

“We?” he murmured, aghast.

“Well,” she said, “you surely won’t let me travel to Glasgow all alone, will you?”

“Her’s a caution, her is!” he privately reflected.

“You can come back on Saturday,” she said; “so that you’ll be in time to collect your rents.  There’s an express to Glasgow from Crewe at 1.15, and to catch that we must take the 12.20 at Shawport.”

She had settled every detail.

“And what about my dinner?” he inquired.

“I’m going to set about it instantly,” laughed she.

“I mean my dinner on Friday?” he said.

“Oh, that!” she replied.  “There’s a restaurant-car from Crewe.  So we can lunch on the train.”

This idea of accompanying her to Glasgow pleased him intensely.  “Glasgow isna’ much i’ my line,” he said.  “But you wenches do as ye like, seemingly.”

Thus, on the Friday morning, he met her down at Shawport Station.  He was in his best clothes, but he had walked.  She arrived in a cab, that carried a pagoda of trunks on its fragile roof; she had come straight from her lodgings.  There was a quarter of an hour before train-time.  He paid for the cab.  He also bought one second-class single and one second-class return to Glasgow, while she followed the porter who trundled her luggage.  When he came out of the booking-office (minus several gold pieces), she was purchasing papers at the bookstall, and farther up the platform the porter had seized a paste-brush, and was opening a cupboard of labels.  An extraordinary scheme presented itself to James Ollerenshaw’s mind, and he trotted up to the porter.

“I’ve seen to the baggage myself,” said Helen, without looking at him.

“All right,” he said.

The porter touched his cap.

“Label that luggage for Crewe,” he whispered to the porter, and passed straight on, as if taking exercise on the platform.

“Yes, sir,” said the porter.

When he got back to Helen of course he had to make conversation with a nonchalant air, in order to hide his guilty feelings.

“So none of ’em has come to see you off!” he observed.

“None of whom?”

“None o’ yer friends.”

“No fear!” she said.  “I wouldn’t have it for anything.  I do hate and loathe good-byes at a railway station.  Don’t you?”