large red
ensign drooped from a staff and trailed in the water astern: the crew
wore scarlet stocking-caps: bright cushion disposed in the stern-sheet
added a touch of luxury to this pomp and circumstance. It might not
rival the barge of Cleopatra upon Cydnus; but the shore-crowd, under
whose eyes it had been waiting for close upon twenty minutes, voted it
to be a very creditable turn out; and Cai, watch in hand, was at least
as impatient as Mark Antony. Off the Committee Ship, a cable's length
up the river, the penultimate race (ran-dan pulling-boats) was finishing
amid banging of guns and bursts of music from the "Troy Town Band,"
saluting the winner with "See the Conquering Hero Comes," the second
boat with strains consecrated to first and second prize-winners in Troy
harbour since days beyond the span of living memory, even as all races
start to the less classical but none the less immemorial air of "Off She
goes to Wallop the Cat."

The crowd parted and made passage for Mrs Bosenna to descend the
slip-way: for Troy is always polite. Its politeness, however, seldom
takes the form of reticence; and as she descended she drew a double
broadside of neighbourly good-days and congratulations, with audible
comments from the back rows on her personal appearance.

"Mornin', Mrs Bosenna--an' a brave breast-knot you're wearin'!"

"Han'some, id'n-a?"

"Handsome, sure 'nough!"

"Fresh coloured as the day she was wed. . . . Good mornin' ma'am!
Good mornin', Mrs Bosenna--an' a proper Queen o' Sheba you be, all
glorious within."

"What a thing 'tis to have money!" remarked a meditative voice deep in
the throng.

"Eh, Billy, my son, it cures half the ills o' life," responded another.

"'Tis a mysterious thing," hazarded a woman--"a dispensation you may
call it, how black suits some complexions while others can't look at
it."

"An' 'tis your sex's perversity," spoke up a male, "that them it don't
suit be apt to wear it longest"--whereat several laughed, for where
everybody is good-humoured the feeblest witticism will pass.

Mrs Bosenna heard these comments, but acknowledged them only by a
scarcely perceptible heightening of colour. She went down the slip-way
royally, with Dinah in close attendance: and Cai, catching sight of her
and pocketing his watch, snatched up a boat-hook to draw the boat's
quarter alongside the slip, while with his disengaged hand he lifted the
brim of a new and glossy top-hat.

"Am I disgra