Captain Cai dived his own hands into the hip-pockets of his new coat, aimlessly searching for pipe and tobacco-pouch; not that he would have ventured to smoke in her presence!--but it gave his hands something to do. "'Glad,' I think you must mean, ma'am," said he slowly. She laughed. "If you're going to make pretty speeches, it's time for me to run indoors," and she left him with a warning that dinner would be ready in ten minutes, or at one o'clock to the tick. This was by the gate of a broad-acred field ("Parc Veor" she had called it) in which her Jerseys browsed. Captain Cai counted them--they were five--while still half-consciously searching for pipe and pouch, which, in fact, he had left behind in the shop, in the pockets of his old coat. By-and-by he realised this, and with a curious sense of helplessness--of having lost his bearings. . . . Ten minutes later Dinah, coming across the mowhay to invite Captain Cai into the house, found him leaning against the gate, sunk in a brown study, contemplating the kine. The smell of roasted sucking-pig dissipated this transient cloud upon his spirits. Mrs Bosenna (who had discarded her apron, and looked mighty genteel with a gold locket dependent from her throat) avowed, appealing to his sympathy, that it mightn't be sentimental, but she, for her part, adored the savour of crackling. "And as for Robert--my late husband--he doted on it." Captain Cai came within an ace of saying fatuously it was a pity the late Mr Bosenna couldn't be present to partake of this; but checked himself. "To think that you should have met him! Well, it's a small world." "There's a lot of folks attend Summercourt Fair--or used to," said Captain Cai, and added that the world was not so noticeably small, if you tried sailing up and down it a bit. "Ah!" exclaimed Mrs Bosenna, dropping knife and fork and clasping her hands. "Yes, to be sure, the vastness of it--the great distances! . . . And so you met my late husband in a boxing tent? Sport of all kinds appealed to him. But isn't boxing a-er--more or less degrading exhibition?" "Nothing of the sort, ma'am. I never went in for it myself--worse luck; never had the time. But my friend 'Bias, now! He's past his prime, o' course; but if only you'd seen him strip--in the old time--" "Er--you're surely not referring to your friend Captain Hunken?" "But I am, ma'am. . . . He had a way o' stepping back an' usin' his reach . . . a trifle slow with the left, always . . . that was his failin'. But the length of his arms would delight you--and he had a hug, too, of his own--if you happened to take an interest in such things." "But I don't," protested Mrs Bosenna. "And you frighten me! If I'd guessed that my other tenant was a prize-fighter--"