Helen with the High Hand | Page 7

don't know a farmer named Bratt that used to have a
farm near Sneyd?" said Helen.
"I can't say as I do," said James.
"Well, that's the man!" said Helen. "He used to come to Longshaw

cattle-market with sheep and things."
"Sheep and things!" echoed James. "What things?"
"Oh! I don't know," said Helen, sharply. "Sheep and things."
"And what did your mother take to Longshaw cattle-market?" James
inquired. "I understood as she let lodgings."
"Not since I've been a teacher," said Helen, rather more sharply.
"Mother didn't take anything to the cattle-market. But you know our
house was just close to the cattle-market."
"No, I didn't," said James, stoutly. "I thought as it was in
Aynsley-street."
"Oh! that's years ago!" said Helen, shocked by his ignorance. "We've
lived in Sneyd-road for years--years."
"I'll not deny it," said James.
"The great fault of our house," Helen proceeded, "was that mother
daren't stir out of it on cattle-market days."
"Why not?"
"Cows!" said Helen. "Mother simply can't look at a cow, and they were
passing all the time."
"She should ha' been thankful as it wasn't bulls," James put in.
"But I mean bulls too!" exclaimed Helen. "In fact, it was a bull that led
to it."
"What! Th' farmer saved her from a mad bull, and she fell in love with
him? He's younger than her, I lay!"
"How did you know that?" Helen questioned. "Besides, he isn't. They're
just the same age."

"Forty-four?" Perceiving delicious danger in the virgin's face, James
continued before she could retort, "I hope Susan wasn't gored?"
"You're quite wrong. You're jumping to conclusions," said Helen, with
an air of indulgence that would have been exasperating had it not been
enchanting. "Things don't happen like that except in novels."
"I've never read a novel in my life," James defended himself.
"Haven't you? How interesting!"
"But I've known a woman knocked down by a bull."
"Well, anyhow, mother wasn't knocked down by a bull. But there was a
mad bull running down the street; it had escaped from the market. And
Mr. Bratt was walking home, and the bull was after him like a shot.
Mother was looking out of the window, and she saw what was going on.
So she rushed to the front door and opened it, and called to Mr. Bratt to
run in and take shelter. And they only just got the door shut in time."
"Bless us!" muttered James. "And what next?"
"Why, I came home from school and found them having tea together."
"And ninety year between them!" James reflected.
"Then Mr. Bratt called every week. He was a widower, with no
children."
"It couldn't ha' been better," said James.
"Oh yes, it could," said Helen. "Because I had the greatest difficulty in
marrying them; in fact, at one time I thought I should never do it. I'm
always in the right, and mother's always in the wrong. She's admitted
that for years. She's had to admit it. Yet she would go her own way.
Nothing would ever cure mother."
"She used to talk just like that of your grandfather," said James. "Susan
always reckoned as she'd got more than her fair share of sense."

"I don't think she thinks that now," said Helen, calmly, as if to say: "At
any rate I've cured her of that." Then she went on: "You see, Mr. Bratt
had sold his farm--couldn't make it pay--and he was going out to
Manitoba. He said he would stop in England. Mother said she wouldn't
let him stop in England where he couldn't make a farm pay. She was
quite right there," Helen admitted, with careful justice. "But then she
said she wouldn't marry him and go out to Manitoba, because of
leaving me alone here to look after myself! Can you imagine such a
reason?"
James merely raised his head quickly several times. The gesture meant
whatever Helen preferred that it should mean.
"The idea!" she continued. "As if I hadn't looked after mother and kept
her in order, and myself, too, for several years! No. She wouldn't marry
him and go out there! And she wouldn't marry him and stay here! She
actually began to talk all the usual conventional sort of stuff, you
know--about how she had no right to marry again, and she didn't
believe in second marriages, and about her duty to me. And so on. You
know. I reasoned with her--I explained to her that probably she had
another thirty years to live. I told her she was quite young. She is. And
why should she make herself permanently miserable, and Mr. Bratt,
and me, merely out of a quite mistaken sense of duty? No use! I tried
everything I could. No use!"
"She was too much for ye?"
"Oh, no!" said Helen,