Hocken and Hunken Part 21

"I can trust both of you, I hope." Mrs Bosenna glanced towards Cai, or so Cai thought.

"The jokes they keep makin'!" Palmerston reported to Mrs Bowldler.

(With the utmost cheerfulness he continued running to and fro between summer-house and residence under the downpour.) "When Mrs Bosenna said that about a merrythought I almost split myself."

"There's a medium in all things," Mrs Bowldler advised him.

"Stand-offish should be your expression when waiting at table; like as if you'd heard it all before several times, no matter how funny they talk. As for splitting, I s.h.i.+ver at the bare thought."

"Well, I didn't do it, really. I just got my hand over my mouth in time."

"And what did that other woman happen to be doing?" asked Mrs Bowldler.

"I partic'l'ly noticed," said Palmerston. "She was sittin' quiet and toyin' with her 'am."

The rain continuing, 'Bias at the close of supper sensationally produced two packs of cards and proposed that, as soon as Palmerston had removed the cloth, they should play what he called "a rubber to whist." He and Mrs Bosenna cut together; Cai with Dinah. Now the two captains could, as a rule, play a good hand at whist. On this occasion they played so abominably as to surprise themselves and each other. Dinah did not profess to be an expert, and Cai's blunders were mostly lost on her.

But 'Bias disgraced himself before his partner, who neither reproached him nor once missed a trick.

"I can't tell what's come over me to-night," he confessed at the end of the second rubber.

"Regatta-day!" laughed Mrs Bosenna, and pushed the cards away.

The wedding-ring on her third finger glanced under the light of the hanging lamp. "Dinah shall tell our fortunes," she suggested.

Dinah took the pack and proceeded very gravely to tell their fortunes.

She began with Captain Hunken, and found that, a dark lady happening in the "second house," he would certainly marry one of that hue, with plenty of money, and live happy ever after.

She next attempted Captain Hocken's. "Well, that's funny, now!" she exclaimed, after dealing out the cards face uppermost.

"What's funny?" asked Cai.

"Why," said Dinah, after a long scrutiny, during which she pursed and unpursed her lips half a dozen times at least, "the cards are different, o' course, but they say the same thing--dark lady and all--and I can't make it other."

"No need," said Cai cheerfully, drawing at his pipe (for Mrs Bosenna had given the pair permission to smoke). "So long as you let 'Bias and me run on the same lines, I'm satisfied. Eh, 'Bias?"

"But 'tis the _same_ lady!"

"Oh! That would alter matters, nat'ch'rally."

Dinah swept the cards together again and shuffled them. "Shall I tell _your_ fortune, mistress?" she asked mischievously.

"No," said Mrs Bosenna, rising. "The rain has stopped, and it's time we were getting home, between the showers."

Again Captain Cai and Captain 'Bias offered gallantly to accompany her to the gate of Rilla Farm; but she would have none of their escort.

"No one is going to insult me on the road," she a.s.sured them.

"And besides, if they did, Dinah would do the screaming. That's why I brought her."

She had enjoyed her evening amazingly. She took her departure with a few happily chosen words which left no doubt of it.

After divesting himself of his coat that night, Captain Cai laid a hand on his upper arm and felt it timidly. Unless he mistook, the flesh beneath the s.h.i.+rt-sleeve yet kept some faint vibration of Mrs Bosenna's hand, resting upon it, thrilling it.

"The point is," said Cai to himself, "it can't be 'Bias, anyway. I felt pretty sure at the time that Philp was lyin'. But what a brazen fellow it is!"

Strangely enough, in his bedroom on the other side of the party wall Captain 'Bias stood at that moment deep in meditation. He, too, was rubbing his arm, just below the biceps.

Yet the explanation is simple. You have only to bethink you that Mrs Bosenna, like any other woman, _had two hands_.

CHAPTER XI.

MRS BOSENNA PLAYS A PARLOUR GAME.

"We have runned out simultaneous," announced Mrs Bowldler next morning, as the two friends sat at breakfast in Captain Cai's parlour, each immersed (or pretending to be immersed) in his own newspaper. They had slept but indifferently, and on meeting at table had avoided, as if by tacit consent, allusions to last night's entertainment. Each of the newspapers contained a full-column report of the Regatta, with its festivities, which gave excuse for silence. With a thrill of innocent pleasure Cai saw his own name in print. He harked back to it several times in the course of his perusal, and confessed to himself that it looked very well.

But Mrs Bowldler, too, had slept indifferently, if her eyes--which were red and tear-swollen--might be taken as evidence. Her air, as she brought in the dishes, spoke of sorrow rather than of anger.

Finding that it attracted no attention, she sighed many times aloud, and at each separate entrance let fall some gloomy domestic news, dropping it as who should say, "I tell you, not expecting to be believed or even heeded, still less applauded for any vigilant care of your interests, but rather that I may not hereafter reproach myself."

"We have runned out simultaneous," she repeated as Captain Cai glanced up from the newspaper. "Which I refer to 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 quant.i.ty,--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.'"

"G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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'