gain," said Mrs Bosenna on Regatta
morning, as she stood before her glass pinning to her bodice a huge bow
of red, white, and blue ribbons. "Black never did become me."

"It becomes ye well enough, mistress, and ye know it," contradicted
Dinah.

"'Tis monotonous, anyway. I can't see why we poor widow-women should be
condemned to wear it for life."

"_You_ bain't," Dinah contradicted again, and added slily, "d'ye wish me
to fetch witnesses?"

Her mistress, tittivating the ribbons, ignored the question.
"I do think we might be allowed to wear colours now and again--say on
Sundays. As it is, I dare say many will be pickin' holes in my
character, even for this little outbreak."

"There's a notion, now! Why, 'tis Queen Victory's Year--and a pretty
business if one widow mayn't pay her respects to another!"

"It do always seem strange to me," Mrs Bosenna mused.

"What?"

"Why, that the Queen should be a widow, same as any one else."

"Low fever," said Dinah. "And I've always heard as the Prince Consort
had a delicate constitution."

"It happened before I was born," said Mrs Bosenna vaguely. "Think o'
that, now! . . . And yet 'twasn't the widowin' I meant so much as the
marryin'. I can't manage to connect it in my mind with folks so
high up in the world as Kings and Queens. 'Tis so intimate."

"You may bet Providence tempers it to 'em somehow," opined Dinah.
"If they didn' have families, what'd become o' English history?"

If any tongues wagged against Mrs Bosenna for wearing the patriotic
colours that day, they were not heard in the holiday crowd at the
Passage Slip when, with nicely calculated unpunctuality, she arrived, at
11.32 (the time appointed having been 11.15), to be conveyed on board
the Committee vessel. (It should be explained here that the aquatic
half of Troy's Passage Regatta is compressed within the forenoon: at
midday Troy dines, and even on holidays observes Greenwich time for
that event. Moreover, the afternoon sports of bicycle racing,
steeplechasing, polo-bending, &c., were preluded in those days--before
an electric-power station worked the haulage on the jetties--by a
procession of huge horses, highly groomed and bedecked with ribbons: and
this procession, starting at 1 P.M., allowed the avid holiday-keeper
small margin for dallying over his meal.)

Mrs Bosenna reached the slip to find Cai waiting below in a four-oared
boat which he had borrowed from the Clerk of the Course. A