Emanuel thankfully took it. "And what about a cap or something?" he
plaintively asked.

"Tak' this," said Uncle James, with remarkable generosity whipping the
Turkish cap from his own head, and handing it to Emanuel.

Emanuel hesitated, then accepted; and, thus uniquely attired, sped away,
still baptising.

At tea (tea proper) James recounted this episode to a somewhat taciturn
and preoccupied Helen.

"He didn't fall into the Water," said Helen, curtly. "Andrew Dean pushed
him in."

"How dost know that?"

"Georgiana and I saw it from my bedroom window. It was she who first saw
them fighting, or at any rate arguing. Then Andrew Dean 'charged' him
in, as if they were playing football, and walked on; and Emanuel
Prockter scrambled out."

"H'm!" reflected James. "Well, if ye ask me, lass, Emanuel brought that
on himsen. I never seed a man look a bigger foo' than Emanuel looked
when he went off in my mackintosh and Turkish cap."

"Your Turkish cap?"

"One of 'em."

"With the tassel?"

"Ay!"

"It's a great shame! That's what it is! I'm sure he didn't look a fool!
He's been very badly treated, and I'll--"

She rose from the table, in sudden and speechless indignation.

"You should ha' seen him, lass!" said James, and added: "I wish ye had!"
He tried to be calm. But she had sprung on him another of her
disconcerting surprises. Was it, after all, possible, conceivable, that
she was in love with Emanuel?

She sat down again. "I know why you say that, uncle"--she looked him in
the face, and put her elbows on the table. "Now, just listen to me!"

Highly perturbed, he wondered what was coming next.

CHAPTER XXII

CONFESSIONAL

"What's the matter with Emanuel Prockter?" Helen asked; meaning, what
were the implied faults of Emanuel Prockter.

There was defiance in her tone. She had risen from the table, and she
had sat down again, and she seemed by her pose to indicate that she had
sat down again with a definite purpose, a purpose to do grievous harm to
the soul's peace of anybody who differed from the statements which she
was about to enunciate, or who gave the wrong sort of answers to her
catechism. She was wearing her black mousseline dress (theoretically
"done with"), which in its younger days always had the effect of rousing
the _grande dame_ in her. She laid her ringless hands, lightly clasped,
on a small, heavy, round mahogany table which stood in the middle of the
little drawing-room, an