tair: and when 'tis your tried
friend fetchin' back riches to you--fairly bringin' you back to life at
the cost o' bein' a beggar hisself--you let him go without so much as a
thank'ee!"

"Cai Hocken don't want my thanks."

"Didn't even want politeness, I suppose--after runnin' here hot foot
with the news that made you rich an' him a poor man! Oh, you're past
all patience! . . . Who should know what he wanted an' didn't get--
I, that had my eyes on his face, or you, that sat like a stuck pig,
glowerin' at the carpet?"

"Gently, missy! . . . There--there didn' seem anything to say."

"There was one thing to say," answered the girl sternly, "and there's
one thing to be done."

"What's that?"

"It mayn't be an easy thing, altogether. But you'll be glad of it
afterwards, and you may as well make up your mind to it."

"Out with it!"

"Mrs Bosenna--Why, what's the matter?"--for 'Bias had interrupted with a
short laugh.

"I'd forgot Mrs Bosenna for the moment."

"Right. Then go on forgettin' her, an' give her up. When you come to
think it over," urged Fancy with the air of a nurse who administers
medicine to a child, "you'll find 'tis the only fit an' proper thing to
do."

Again 'Bias laughed, and this time his laugh was even shorter and
grimmer than before.

"Well and good--but wait one moment, missy! D'ye know what Cai Hocken
said to me, last night in the garden, when he reckoned as I'd lost my
money? No, you don't. 'Look here,' he said, 'if you've still a mind to
that woman and she've a mind to you, I'll stand aside.' That's what he
said: and d'ye know what I answered? I told him to go to hell."

"I see." Fancy stood musing.

"Makes it a bit awkward, eh?--Cai bein' a man of spirit, with all his
faults."

"Well," she decided, "unless we can find his money for him, he'll have
to marry her, whether or no. 'Faults,' indeed? I believe," went on the
wise child, "you two be more to one another than that woman ever was to
either, or ever will be."

"We won't discuss that," said 'Bias, "now that Cai's got to marry her."

Cai retired to bed early that night, wearied in all his limbs with much
and aimless walking. If, as he trudged highroad or lane in the early
summer heat, any thought of Mrs Bosenna arose for a moment and conquered
the anodyne of bodily exercise, it was not a thought of grudging her to
'Bias. By the turn of Fortune's wheel 'Bias would win her now.
To _him_, at all events, she was