o coals. Palmerston tells me
there's not above two-and-a-half scuttlefuls in either cellar, search
them how you will." (The search at any rate could not be extensive,
since the cellars measured 8 feet by 4 feet apiece.)

"Which," resumed Mrs Bowldler, after a pause and a sigh, "it may be
un-Christian to say so of a man that goes about in a bath-chair with one
foot in the grave, but in my belief Mr Rogers sends us short weight."

"I'll order some more this very morning, eh, 'Bias?"

'Bias grunted approval.

"And while we're about it, we may as well order in a quantity,--as much
as the sheds will hold. We've pretty well reached the end o' summer,
an' prices will be risin' before long. . . . If I were you, Mrs
Bowldler," added Cai with a severity beyond his wont, "I shouldn't call
people dishonest on mere suspicion."

"If you were me, sir--makin' so bold,--you'd ha' seen more of the world
with its Rogerses and Dodgerses. There now!" Mrs Bowldler set down a
dish of fried potatoes and stood resigned. "Dismiss me you may, Captain
Hocken, and this instant. I ask no less. It was bound to come. As my
sister warned me, 'You was always high in the instep, from a child,
and,' says she, 'high insteps are out of place in the Reduced.'"

"God bless the woman!" Cai laid down the paper and stared. "Who ever
talked of dismissin' you?"

"I have rode in my time in a side-saddle: and that, sir, is not easily
forgotten. But if you will overlook it, gentlemen," said Mrs Bowldler
tearfully, "I might go on to mention that Palmerston have had a
misfortune with a tumbler last night."

Cai continued to stare. "I _saw_ a couple performin' in the street
yesterday. How did the boy get mixed up in it?"

"He broke it clearin' up the _debree_ in the summer-house after the
visitors had gone," Mrs Bowldler explained. "Which being a new
departure, I hope you will allow me to pass it by in his case with a
caution."

In the course of the forenoon Cai paid a call at Mr Rogers's
harbour-side store, where he found Mr Rogers himself superintending,
from his invalid-chair, the weighing out of coal. Fancy Tabb was in
attendance.

"Hullo!" Mr Rogers greeted him. "Well, the show went very well
yesterday, and I see your name in the papers this morning."

Cai confessed that he, too, had seen it.

"And it won't be the last time either, not by a long way. I was wantin'
a word with you. Cap'n Hunken,--eh, but that's the sort of friend