"He's engaged to Lilian. It's the first engagement in the family, and
she's the youngest but one."

Helen shut the trunk with a snap, then opened it and shut it again. And
then she rose, smoothing her hair.

"I scarcely know Lilian," she said, coldly. "And I don't know your
mother at all. But I must call and congratulate the child. No, Andrew
Dean didn't breathe a word."

"I may tell you as a dreadful secret, Nell, that we aren't any of us in
the seventh heaven about it. Aunt Annie said yesterday: 'I don't know
that I'm so set up with it as all that, Jane' (meaning mother). We
aren't so set up with it as all that."

"Why not?"

"Oh, we aren't. I don't know why. I pretend to be, lest Lilian should
imagine I'm jealous."

It was at this point that the voice of James Ollerenshaw announced a
young man.

The remainder of that afternoon was like a bewildering dream to James
Ollerenshaw. His front room seemed to be crowded with a multitude of
peacocks, that would have been more at home under the sun of Mrs.
Prockter's lawns up at Hillport. Yet there were only three persons
present besides himself. But decidedly they were not of his world; they
were of the world that referred to him as "old Jimmy Ollerenshaw," or