nd decided in the
fraction of a second what he must do. The faculty of instant decision is
indispensable to safety in these swift-rising crises.

He raised his hat, praying that Helen would not stop to speak. Not
gracefully, not with the beauteous curves of an Emanuel did he raise his
hat--but he raised it. His prayer was answered.

"There!" his chest said to Helen. "If you thought I didn't know how to
behave to your conceited acquaintances, you were mistaken."

And his casual, roving eye pretended that hat-raising was simply the
most ordinary thing on earth.

Such was the disturbing incident which ended the bleeding of his
dignity. In order to keep up the pretence that hat-raising was a normal
function of his daily life he was obliged to talk freely; and he did
talk freely. But neither he nor Helen said a word as to the Prockters.

CHAPTER VI

MRS. BUTT'S DEPARTURE

James Ollerenshaw's house was within a few hundred yards of the top of
Trafalgar-road, on the way from Bursley to Hanbridge. I may not indicate
the exact house, but I can scarcely conceal that it lay between Nos. 160
and 180, on the left as you go up. It was one of the oldest houses in
the street, and though bullied into insignificance by sundry detached
and semi-detached villas opposite--palaces occupied by reckless persons
who think nothing of paying sixty or even sixty-five pounds a year for
rent alone--it kept a certain individuality and distinction because it
had been conscientiously built of good brick before English domestic
architecture had lost trace of the Georgian style. First you went up two
white steps (white in theory), through a little gate in a wrought-iron
railing painted the colour of peas after they have been cooked in a bad
restaurant. You then found yourself in a little front yard, twelve feet
in width (the whole width of the house) by six feet in depth. The yard
was paved with large square Indian-red tiles, except a tiny circle in
the midst bordered with black-currant-coloured tiles set endwise with a
scolloped edge. This magical circle contained earth, and in the centre
of it was a rhododendron bush which, having fallen into lazy habits, had
forgotten the art of flowering. Its leaves were a most pessimistic
version of the tint of the railing.

The facade of the house comprised three windows and a door--that is to
say, a window and a door on the ground floor and two windows above. The
brickwork was assuredly admirable;