Three-quarters of an hour later he emerged in clean shirt and threadbare, but well-brushed, uniform, arrayed for Mr. and Mrs. Fossell's whist-party. As he passed the Garrison gate, Mrs. Treacher, who sometimes acted deputy for her husband, began to ring the six o'clock bell. He halted and waited for her to finish. "Mrs. Treacher," he said, "can you tell me the price of flannel?" "Flannel," answered Mrs. Treacher, "is all prices, according to quality." "But I am talking of good ordinary flannel, fit to make up into a man's shirt." "Then you couldn't say less than one-three-farthings, or one-and-a-ha'penny at the lowest." "And how much would be required?" "Good Lord!" said Mrs. Treacher. "As if that didn't all depend on the man!" "I was thinking, Mrs. Treacher, to present your husband with one: that is to say, with the material, if you will not mind making it up." Mrs. Treacher curtsied. "And I thank you kindly, sir, for 'tis not before he needs one, which, being under average size and the width just a yard, as you may reckon, he oughtn't to take more than three-and-a-half yards at the outside." "Three-and-a-half at one-three-farthings--that makes--Oh, confound these fractions!" said the Commandant. "We'll make it four shillings, and you had best step down to Tregaskis' shop to-morrow and choose the stuff yourself." He counted out the money into Mrs. Treacher's hand, and left her curtseying. As he went, he jingled the few coins remaining in his breeches pocket. They amounted to two-and-seven-pence in all--and almost a week stood between him and pay-day. CHAPTER III THE COMMANDANT FINESSES A KNAVE "I remember the Bartlemys perfectly," said Miss Gabriel, addressing the company as they sat around Mr. and Mrs. Fossell's dining-table and trifled with a light collation of cordial waters and ratafia biscuits--prelude to serious whist. "I carry them both in my mind's eye, though I must have been but a tiny child when he succumbed to apoplexy, and she left the Islands to reside with a married sister at Scarborough. Very poorly-off he left her. Somehow, our Commanding Officers have never contrived to save money--even in the old days, when the post was worth having." Miss Gabriel said it lightly but pointedly, with a glance at the Commandant. The company stared at their plates and glasses. It was well-known that (as Mr. Rogers put it) Miss Gabriel "had her knife into" the patient man, and there were tongues that attributed her spitefulness to disappointment. Fifteen years ago, when Major Narcisse Vigoureux--no longer in his first youth, but still a man of handsome presence--had first arrived in the Islands to take over his command, Miss Gabriel was a not uncomely woman of thirty. _Partis_ in the Islands are few, as you may suppose. He was a bachelor, she a spinster; she had money, and he position. What wonder, then, if the Islanders expected them to make a match of it?