briefly as "Jimmy." And he had to sit and listen to them, and even to
answer coherently when spoken to. Emanuel Prockter was brilliant. He had
put his hat on one chair and his cane across another, and he conversed
with ducal facility. The two things about him that puzzled the master of
the house were--first, why he was not, at such an hour, engaged in at
any rate the pretence of earning his living; and, second, why he did not
take his gloves off. No notion of work seemed to exist in the minds of
the three. They chattered of tennis, novels, music, and particularly of
amateur operatic societies. James acquired the information that Emanuel
was famous as a singer of songs. The topic led then naturally to James's
concertina; the talk lightly caressed James's concertina, and then
Emanuel swept it off to the afternoon tea-room of the new Midland Grand
Hotel at Manchester, where Emanuel had lately been. And that led to the
Old Oak Tree tea-house in Bond-street, where, not to be beaten by
Emanuel, Sarah Swetnam had lately been.

"Suppose we have tea," said Helen.

And she picked up a little brass bell which stood on the central table
and tinkled it. James had not noticed the bell. It was one of the many
little changes that Helen had introduced. Each change by itself was a
nothing--what is one small bell in a house?--yet in the mass they
amounted to much. The bell was obviously new. She must have bought it;
but she had not mentioned it to him. And how could they all sit at the
tiny table in the kitchen? Moreover, he had no fancy for entertaining
the whole town of Bursley to meals. However, the immediate prospect of
tea produced in James a feeling of satisfaction, even though he remained
in perfect ignorance of the methods by which Helen meant to achieve the
tea. She had rung the bell, and gone on talking, as if the tea would
cook itself and walk in on its hind legs and ask to be eaten.