Now with a rampant climber such as Rosa Devoniensis it is advisable to cut out each autumn, and clean remove some of the old wood; and this is no easy job when early neglect has allowed the plant to riot up and over the root-thatch. Mrs Bosenna had a particular fondness for this rose, and for the gipsy flush which separates it from other white roses as an unmistakable brunette. Yet she was sometimes minded to cut it down and uproot it, for the perverse thing would persist on flowering at its summit, and William Skin, sent aloft on ladders--whether in autumn or spring to prune this riot, or in summer to reap blooms by the armful-- invariably did damage to the thatch. Mrs Bosenna, then, gloved and armed with a pair of secateurs, stood next morning by the base of the Devoniensis holding debate with herself. The issue--that she would decide to spare the offender for yet another year--was in truth determined; for already William Skin had planted one ladder against the house-wall and had shuffled off to the barn for another, to be hoisted on to the slope of the thatch, and there belayed with a rope around the chimney-stack. But she yet played with the resolve, taken last year, to be stern and order execution. She was still toying with it when the garden-gate clicked, and looking up, she perceived Captain Cai. "Ah! . . . Good morning, Captain Hocken!" Cai advanced along the pathway and gravely doffed his hat. "Good morning, ma'am--if I don't intrude?" "Not at all. In fact I was expecting you." "Er--on which errand, ma'am?" "--Which?" echoed Mrs Bosenna, as if she did not understand. "Shall we take the more painful business first?" suggested Cai humbly. "If indeed it has not--er--wiped out the other. The damage done yesterday to your field, ma'am--" "Have you brought Captain Hunken along with you?" asked Mrs Bosenna, interrupting him. "No, ma'am. He will be here in half an hour, sharp." Cai consulted his watch. "You have stolen a march on him then?" she smiled. Cai flushed. "No, again, ma'am. Er--in point of fact we tossed up which should call first." "Then," said she calmly, "we'll leave that part of the business until he arrives; though, since it concerns you both, I can't see why you did not bring him along with you. Do you know," she added with admirable simplicity, "it has struck me once or twice of late that you and Captain Hunken are not the friends you were?" Still Cai stared, his face mantling with confusion. This woman was an enigma to him. Surely she must understand? Surely she must have received that brace of letters to which she evaded all allusion? And here was she just as blithely postponing all allusion to yesterday's offence! But no; not quite, it seemed; for she continued-- "I cannot think why you two should challenge one another as you did yesterday, and make sillies of yourselves before a lot of farmers. It--it humiliates you." "We were a pair of fools," conceded Cai.