Helen soon settled down into a condition of ease, which put an end to
blushing. She knew she was admired.

"What are you doing i' Bosley?" James demanded.

"I'm living i' Bosley," she retorted, smartly.

"Living here!" He stopped, and his hard old heart almost stopped too. If
not in mourning, she was in semi-mourning. Surely Susan had not had the
effrontery to die, away in Longshaw, without telling him!

"Mother has married again," said Helen, lightly.

"Married!" He was staggered. The wind was knocked out of him.

"Yes. And gone to Canada!" Helen added.

You pick up your paper in the morning, and idly and slowly peruse the
advertisements on the first page, forget it, eat some bacon, grumble at
the youngest boy, open the paper, read the breach of promise case on
page three, drop it, and ask your wife for more coffee--hot--glance at
your letters again, then reopen the paper at the news page, and find
that the Tsar of Russia has been murdered, and a few American cities
tumbled to fragments by an earthquake--you know how you feel then.
James Ollerenshaw felt like that. The captain of the bowling-club,
however, poising a bowl in his right hand, and waiting for James
Ollerenshaw to leave his silken dalliance, saw nothing but an old man
and a young woman sitting on a Corporation seat.