h cream;
and the junket--when Dinah had removed the cloth--by a plate of
home-made biscuits, flanked by decanters of port and sherry.

"Widow's port is the best, they say." Mrs Bosenna invited him to fill
his glass without waiting for ceremony. "You smoke?" she asked.

He confessed that he was without pipe or tobacco. Dinah was summoned
again, left the room after a whispered consultation, and returned with a
small sheaf of clean churchwarden pipes and a cake of tobacco, dark in
hue, somewhat dry but (as a quick inspection assured Captain Cai) quite
smokeable.

"Now you're to make yourself at ease," said Mrs Bosenna, rising and
moving to the door. Captain Cai, remembering his manners, rose and held
it open for her. "The wine is at your elbow and (oh, believe me, I
understand men!) when you've finished your smoke you will find me in the
rose-garden. That's my _real_ garden, though nothing to boast of at
this time of the year. But April's the month for pruning tea-roses, and
this weather in April is not to be missed. I want to hear more of your
friend; and when you are ready--you are not to hurry--Dinah will show
you the way."

Captain Cai, left alone, carved a pipeful of tobacco with his
pocket-knife; chose a clay; filled, lit it, and smoked. Two glasses of
wine had sufficed him, for he was an abstemious man: but, for all his
hard life, he could enjoy comfort. He found it here; in the good food,
the generous liquor, the twinkle on the glass and decanter, the
ill-executed but solid portraits on the walls, the hearthrug soft
beneath his sole, the April combination of sunshine slanting through the
window and a brisk but not oppressive coal fire on the hearth.

He smoked. The tobacco (smuggled and purchased at low cost by the late
Mr Bosenna) had been excellent in its time, and was palatable yet.

It stuck in Captain Cai's conscience, however, and pricked it while he
smoked, that he had given Mrs Bosenna a wrong impression of his friend.

`Bias a mere prize-fighter! `Bias of all people! But that is what
comes of laying stress on one particular accomplishment of an Admirable
Crichton.

He ruminated on this: finished his pipe: and having knocked out the
ashes thoughtfully on the bars of the grate, sought the back garden
without the help of Dinah.

The rose-garden to the uninstructed eye was--now in April--but a
wilderness of scrubby stunted thorns. In the midst of it he found Mrs
Bosenna, gloved, armed