nder for yet another
year--was in truth determined; for already William Skin had planted one
ladder against the house-wall and had shuffled off to the barn for
another, to be hoisted on to the slope of the thatch, and there belayed
with a rope around the chimney-stack. But she yet played with the
resolve, taken last year, to be stern and order execution. She was
still toying with it when the garden-gate clicked, and looking up, she
perceived Captain Cai.

"Ah! . . . Good morning, Captain Hocken!"

Cai advanced along the pathway and gravely doffed his hat.
"Good morning, ma'am--if I don't intrude?"

"Not at all. In fact I was expecting you."

"Er--on which errand, ma'am?"

"--Which?" echoed Mrs Bosenna, as if she did not understand.

"Shall we take the more painful business first?" suggested Cai humbly.
"If indeed it has not--er--wiped out the other. The damage done
yesterday to your field, ma'am--"

"Have you brought Captain Hunken along with you?" asked Mrs Bosenna,
interrupting him.

"No, ma'am. He will be here in half an hour, sharp." Cai consulted his
watch.

"You have stolen a march on him then?" she smiled.

Cai flushed. "No, again, ma'am. Er--in point of fact we tossed up
which should call first."

"Then," said she calmly, "we'll leave that part of the business until he
arrives; though, since it concerns you both, I can't see why you did not
bring him along with you. Do you know," she added with admirable
simplicity, "it has struck me once or twice of late that you and Captain
Hunken are not the friends you were?"

Still Cai stared, his face mantling with confusion. This woman was an
enigma to him. Surely she must understand? Surely she must have
received that brace of letters to which she evaded all allusion?
And here was she just as blithely postponing all allusion to yesterday's
offence!

But no; not quite, it seemed; for she continued--

"I cannot think why you two should challenge one another as you did
yesterday, and make sillies of yourselves before a lot of farmers.
It--it humiliates you."

"We were a pair of fools," conceded Cai.

"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 awkwar