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"So," continued Mrs Bosenna hardily, "reckoning that the bed of the stream may have been choked by what the winter rains carry down, and this being our favourite place for the pans, under the cool of the bridge, down happens Dinah " "Excuse me, ma'am; but ain't it rather near the high road?" "It is, Captain Hunken: and I have often thought of it at nights.
"Well," he sighed, "the man's done for both of us, that's all!" "Not a bit," said 'Bias sturdily. "We'll walk up early to-morrow, and explain. Ten to one it'll put her in the best o' tempers, havin' such a laugh against us both." "He can't have known!" said Mrs Bosenna early next morning, sitting in a high-backed chair beside the kitchen-table.
"Which," Mrs Bowldler reported to Fancy, who had left her master's sick-bed to pay a fleeting visit to Palmerston's, "the treatment was drastic for a growin' child. First of all Mrs Bosenna, that never had a child of her own, sent down to the cabin for the mustard that had been left over from the Sailin' Committee's sangwidges, and mixed up a drink with it and a little cold water.
Mrs Bosenna opened her dark eyes wide; and turned them interrogatively upon Dinah. "Letters?" "Letters?" repeated Dinah, taking her cue. Relief broke like a sun-burst over Cai's face. "But perhaps you don't read your letters, ma'am, until after breakfast? And, if so, we're in time." "What letters?" asked Mrs Bosenna. "They've surely been delivered, ma'am?
He turns 'em blue as they come." Mrs Bosenna tapped her foot yet more pettishly. "It's perfectly ridiculous," she declared, "to be kept out of one's own parlour by a bird! Go and call in William Skin, and tell him to take away the nasty thing." "And him with a family?" "He's hard of hearin'," said Mrs Bosenna. "It's a hardness you can t depend on.
"Put it, if you please, that I was your friend and misled you to trust in Rogers, that you lost money by it " "Who said so?" "I say so. Put it at the lowest that you sunk a hundred pound' in the Saltypool " "Eh?" "In the Saltypool " Cai met his stare and nodded. "And not your own money, neither. Mrs Bosenna " 'Bias started and laid down his pipe. "Drop that!" he interjected with a growl.
"Thank you." Fancy seated herself. "If you please, Cap'n Hocken, I got a very funny question to ask." "Well?" "You mustn't think I'm inquisitive " "Go on." "If you please, Cap'n Hocken, are you very fond indeed of Mrs Bosenna?" Cai turned about to the hearth and stooped for the tongs, as if to place a lump of coal on the fire.
At the back of his mind there may have lurked a suspicion that Mrs Bosenna, as a business woman, was not in the least likely to bestow her hand on a penniless sailor: but there was no reason why he should allow this suspicion to obtrude itself, since self-respect would have forbidden him, being penniless, to pursue the courtship.
The plants were short yet, and the garden itself far from beautiful; but the twigs had thrown up shoots, and on the shoots had opened, or were opening, roses that drew even his inexperienced eye to admire them. "I'm afraid there's no doubt of it," said Mrs Bosenna. "I love the old H.P.'s: but you must grow the Teas and Hybrid Teas nowadays, if you want to exhibit.
"That," said 'Bias sententiously, withdrawing his pipe from his lips, "isn' business, but pleasure." "You may not believe it, Captain Hocken," protested Mrs Bosenna, "but 'spillikins' helps me to fix my thoughts. And you ought to feel flattered, really you ought " She laughed now, and archly "Because, as a fact, I was fixing them on you at the very moment Dinah showed you in!"
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