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In the course of the next week he made one or two attempts to sound Mrs Bosenna and assure himself that she meant to attend the sale and secure Lot 9; but she spoke of it with an irritating carelessness. Almost it might have persuaded him had he been less practised in her wayward moods that she had dismissed the affair from her mind.
It crossed his mind for a moment that a lady so timid with cattle had no business to be dwelling alone at Rilla Farm. "It's different with my own cows," gasped Mrs Bosenna, as if interpreting and answering this thought in one breath. "I'm used to them but Mr Middlecoat will insist on keeping these wild beasts! though he knows I'm a lone woman and they're not to be held by any fences "
"Well, mistress, you are a bold one, I must say!" commented Dinah that night by the kitchen fire, where Mrs Bosenna enjoyed a chat and, at this season of the year, a small glass of hot brandy-and-water, with a slice of lemon in it, before going to bed. "I don't see where the boldness comes in," said the widow. She was studying the fire, and spoke inattentively. "Two hundred pounds!"
At that moment, too, the local secretary came running with word that the first teams were already harnessed, and awaited the judges' preliminary inspection. Mr Widger and Mr Nicholls made their excuses, therefore, and hurried off to their duties. "I have a bone to pick with you," said Mrs Bosenna, as she and Cai took their way leisurably across the field.
"Please be seated, Captain Hocken," said Mrs Bosenna, covering inward merriment with the demurest of smiles. "You shall tell me your business later on that's to say, if there's no pressing hurry about it?" "There's no pressin hurry," admitted Cai. "It's important, though, in a way important to me; and any ways more important than smokin' a pipe an' watchin' you play parlour games."
"What men cannot see somehow," she went on angrily, "is that it doesn't end there. That kind of thing humiliates a woman; especially when when she happens to be cast on her own resources and it is everything to her to find a man she can trust." Mrs Bosenna threw into these words so much feeling that Cai in a moment forgot self. His awkwardness fell from him as a garment. "You may trust me, ma'am.
But he stood still, a figure of woe, now glancing at Mrs Bosenna, anon staring fixedly at the handkerchief as if in wonder how it came in his hand. He noted, too, for the first time that the tall clock in the corner had an exceptionally loud tick. "Go away!" commanded Mrs Bosenna after a minute or so, looking up with tear-stained eyes. It seemed that she had suddenly became aware of his presence.
Mrs Bosenna, seated at the head of her polished mahogany table and engaged upon a game of "spillikins" which is a solitary trial of skill, and consists in lifting, one by one, with a delicate ivory hook a mass of small ivory pieces tangled as intricately as the bones in a kingfisher's nest showed no more than a pretty surprise at the intrusion.
"Yes: the other summer-house fronts a bit more up the harbour; t'wards the fireworks, that's to say." "You ought to know: you chose it. . . . But anyway I asked her first." "Thank you thank you both!" interposed Mrs Bosenna, leaving the question open. "And may I bring Dinah too? She's almost as silly about fireworks as I am, poor woman! and life on a farm can be dull."
"Put them down on the table, please. And kindly take a look at the oven. You needn't let the bread burn, even if I am to take breakfast in the kitchen." "But ain't you in a hurry to open them, mistress?" asked Dinah, pretending to go, still hanging on her heel. "Maybe I am; maybe I ain't." Mrs Bosenna picked up the two envelopes with a carelessness which was slightly overdone.
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