Hocken and Hunken Part 23

"Same here."

"Please be seated, Captain Hocken," said Mrs Bosenna, covering inward merriment with the demurest of smiles. "You shall tell me your business later on--that's to say, if there's no pressing hurry about it?"

"There's no _pressin_ hurry," admitted Cai. "It's important, though, in a way--important to _me_; and any ways more important than smokin' a pipe an' watchin' you play parlour games."

"That," said 'Bias sententiously, withdrawing his pipe from his lips, "isn' business, but pleasure."

"You may not believe it, Captain Hocken," protested Mrs Bosenna, "but 'spillikins' helps me to fix my thoughts. And you ought to feel flattered, really you ought--"

She laughed now, and archly--"Because, as a fact, I was fixing them on you at the very moment Dinah showed you in!" She threw him a look which might mean little or much. Cai took it to mean much.

"Ma'am,--" he began, but she had turned and was appealing to 'Bias.

"Captain Hunken and I were at that moment agreeing that a man of your abilities--a native of Troy, too--and, so to speak, at the height of his powers--ought not to be rusting or allowed to rust in a little place where so much wants to be done. For my part,"--her eyes still interrogated 'Bias,--"I could never live with a man, and look up to him, unless he put his heart into some work, be it farming, or public affairs, or what else you like. I put that as an ill.u.s.tration, of course: just to show you how it appeals to us women; and we _do_ make up half the world, however much you bachelor gentlemen may pretend to despise us."

"That settles poor old 'Bias, anyhow," thought Cai, and at the same moment was conscious of a returning gush of affection for his old friend, and of some self-reproach mingling in the warm flow.

"Why, as for that, ma'am," said he, "though you put it a deal too kindly--'twas about something o' that natur' I came to consult you."

"School Board?" suggested 'Bias.

"That's right. I knew Rogers had dropped a hint to you about it: but o'

course, seein' you here, I never guessed--"

Mrs Bosenna clapped her hands together. "And on that hint away comes Captain Hunken to ask my advice: knowing that I should be interested too. Ah, if only we women understood friendship as men do! . . .

But you come and consult us, you see. . . . And now you must both stop for dinner and talk it over."

CHAPTER XII.

_AMANTIUM IRAE_.

"What I feel about it," said Cai modestly at dinner, "is that I mightn't be equal to the position, not havin' studied education."

"Education!" echoed Mrs Bosenna in a high tone of contempt and with a half vicious dig of her carving-fork into the breast of a goose that Dinah had browned to a turn. (Both Cai and 'Bias had offered to carve for her, but she had declined their services, being anxious to provoke no further jealousy. Also be it said that the operation lends itself, even better than does the game of spillikins, to a pretty display of hands and wrists). "Education! You know enough, I hope, to tell the Board to get rid of their latest craze. You'll hardly believe it," she went on, turning to 'Bias, "but I happened to pa.s.s the Girls' School the other day, and if there wasn't a piano going!--yes, actually a piano!

When you come to think that the parents of some of those children don't earn sixteen shillings a-week!"

"Mons'rous," 'Bias agreed.

"But I don't understand, ma'am," said Cai, "that the children themselves play the piano. I made inquiries about that, it being a new thing since my day: and I'm told it's for the teachers to use in singin' lessson, an' to help the children to keep time at drill an' what-not."

"The teachers? And who are the teachers, I'd like to know?--Nasty stuck-up things, if they want the children to keep time, what's to prevent their calling out 'One, two--right, left' like ordinary people?

But--oh, dear me, no! We're quite above _that!_ So it's tinkle-tum, tinkle-tum, and all out of the rates."

"But 'one, two--right, left' wouldn' carry ye far in a singin' lesson,"

urged Cai.

"And who _wants_ all this singin'? There's William Skin, my waggoner, for instance--five children, and a three-roomed cottage--all the children attending school, and regular, too. Pleasant life it would be for William, with all five coming home with 'The Sea, the Open Sea' in their mouths and all about the house when he gets home from work!

Leastways it would be, if he wasn't providentially deaf."

"Is the woman deaf, too?" asked 'Bias.

"No. She believes in Education," said Mrs Bosenna. "She's _bound_ to believe in anything that takes the children off her hands five days in the week."

Cai puckered his brow. "But," said he, harking back, "I made inquiries, too, who paid for the piano, and was told the teachers had collected the money by goin' round with a subscription-list an gettin' up little entertainments. So it doesn't come out of the rates."

"You appear to have had your eye on this openin' for some time,"

retorted Mrs Bosenna, with a faint flush of annoyance. She very much disliked being proved in the wrong. "And it's not very polite of you to contradict me!"

Cai was crestfallen at once. "I didn' mean it in that light, ma'am," he stammered; "and I only made inquiries, d'ye see? Bein' ignorant of so many things ash.o.r.e. You'd be astonished how ignorant 'Bias an' me found ourselves, first-goin' off."

"Speak for yourself," put in 'Bias.

"You should have come to me," said Mrs Bosenna. "I could have told you all about Education, especially the sort that ought to be given to labourers' children; and it's astonishin' to me the way some people will talk on matters they know nothing about. My late husband made a study of the question, having been fined five shillin' and costs, the year before he married me, just for withdrawing a dozen children from school to pick his apples for him. As luck would have it, one of them fell off a tree and broke his leg, and that gave the Board an excuse to take the matter up. My husband argued it out with the Bench. 'The children like it,' he said, 'for it keeps 'em out of doors, and provides 'em with healthy exercise. If Education sets a boy against climbing for apples, why then,' says he, speaking up boldly, 'with your Worships' leave, Education must be something clean against Nature, as I always thought it was. And the parents like it, for the coppers it brings in. And the farmer gets his apples saved. If that's so,' says he, 'here's a transaction that benefits everybody concerned, instead of which the Board goes out of its way to hara.s.s me for it.' The chairman, Sir Felix, owned he was right, too. 'Bosenna,' says he, 'I can't answer you if I would. Nothing grieves me more, sitting here, than having to administer the law as I find it. But, as things are, I can't let you off with less.'"

This anecdote, and the close arguments used by Mr Bosenna, plunged Cai in thought; and for the remainder of the meal he sat abstracted, joining by fits and starts in the conversation, now and then raising his eyes to a portrait of the deceased farmer, an enlarged and highly-tinted photograph, which gazed down on him from the opposite wall. The gaze was obstinate, brow-beating, as though it challenged Cai to find a flaw in the defence: and Cai, although dimly aware of a fallacy somewhere, could not meet the challenge. He lowered his eyes again to his plate.

He found himself wondering if, in any future circ.u.mstances, Mrs Bosenna would consent to hang the portrait in another apartment. . . .

Into so deep an abstraction it cast him, indeed, that when Mrs Bosenna arose to leave them to their wine and tobacco, he scrambled to his feet a good three seconds too late. . . . 'Bias (usually lethargic in his movements) was already at the door, holding it open for her.

What was worse--'Bias having closed the door upon her, returned to his seat with a slight but insufferable air of patronage, and--pa.s.sed the decanter of wine to him!

"You'll find it pretty good," said 'Bias, dropping into his chair and heavily crossing his legs.

Cai swallowed down a sudden tide of rage. "After you!" said he with affected carelessness. "I've tasted it afore."

"Well--if you _won't_--" 'Bias stretched out a slow arm, filled his gla.s.s, and set down the decanter beside his own dessert plate.

"You'll find those apples pretty good," he went on, sipping the wine, "though not up to the c.o.x's Orange Pippins or the Blenheim Oranges that come along later." He smacked his lips. "You'd better try this port wine. Maybe 'tis a different quality to what you tasted when here by yourself."

"Thank 'ee," answered Cai. "I said 'after you.'"

"Oh?" 'Bias pushed the decanter. "You weren't very tactful just now, were you?" he asked after a pause. "_Is_ it the same wine?"

"O' course it is. . . . _When_ wasn't I tactful?"

"Why, when you upped an' contradicted her like that." 'Bias started to fill his pipe. "Women are--what's the word?--sensitive; 'specially at their own table."

"I _didn'_ contradict her," maintained Cai. "Leastways--"

"There's no reason to lose your temper about it, is there? . . .

You gave me that impression, an' if you didn' give her the same, I'm mistaken."

"I'm not losin' my temper."

"No? . . . Well, whatever you did, 'tis done, an' no use to fret.

Only I want you and Mrs Bosenna to be friends--she bein' our landlady, so to speak."