"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 pass 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."