“Oh, that!” she ejaculated.  “I thought you were giving me that.  I never thought you’d ask me for it again, uncle.  I’d completely forgotten all about it.”

She seemed quite sincere in this amazing assertion.

His acquaintance with the ways of women was thus enlarged, suddenly, and at the merely nominal expense of twenty-five pounds.  It was a wondrous proof of his high spirits and his general contentedness with himself that he should have submitted to the robbery without a groan.

“What’s twenty-five pun’?” he reflected.  “There’ll be no luggage for her at Edinburgh; that steamer’ll go without her; and then I shall give in.  I shall talk to her about the ways o’ Providence, and tell her it’s borne in upon me as she must have Wilbraham Hall if she’s in a mind to stay.  I shall save my face, anyhow.”

And he further decided that, in case of necessity, in case of Helen at a later stage pushing her inquiries as to the luggage inconveniently far he would have to bribe the porter at Shawport to admit to her that he, the porter, had made a mistake in the labelling.

When they had satisfied themselves that Edinburgh did not contain Helen’s trunks—­no mean labour, for the lost luggage office was closed, and they had to move mountains in order to get it opened on the plea of extremest urgency—­Jimmy Ollerenshaw turned to Susan’s daughter, saying to himself that she must be soothed regardless of cost.  Miracles would not enable her to catch the steamer now, and the hour was fast approaching when he would benevolently offer her the gift of Wilbraham Hall.

“Well, lass,” he began, “I’m right sorry.  What’s to be done?”

“There’s nothing at all to be done,” she replied, smiling sadly.  She might have upbraided him for carelessness in the matter of the luggage.  She might have burst into tears and declared passionately that it was all his fault.  But she did not.  “Except, of course, that I must cable to mother.  She’s coming to Quebec to meet me.”

“That’ll do to-morrow,” he said.  “What’s to be done to-night?  In th’ way o’ supper, as ye might say?”

“We must go to an hotel.  I believe the station hotel is the best.”  She pointed to a sign and a directing black hand which said:  “To the hotel.”

In a minute James Ollerenshaw found himself in the largest and most gorgeous hotel in Scotland.

“Look here, wench,” he said.  “I don’t know as this is much in my line.  Summat a thought less gaudy’ll do for my old bones.”

“I won’t move a step farther this night!” Helen declared.  “I’m ready to drop.”

He remembered that she must be soothed.

“Well,” he said, “here goes!”

And he strode across the tessellated pavement under the cold, scrutinizing eye of menials to a large window marked in gold letters:  “Bureau.”

“Have ye gotten a couple of bedrooms like?” he asked the clerk.