e 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 illustration, 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 pass the Girls' School the
other day, and if there wasn't a piano going!--yes, actually a piano!