Hocken and Hunken Part 42

"But which of ee's won?" demanded their backers.

"_d.a.m.n_ who's won!" was 'Bias's answer; and he looked too dangerous to be pressed further.

A wager is a wager, however; and the judges' decision was clamoured for, with threats that, until it was given, the Agricultural Demonstration would not be suffered to proceed. Mr Sam Nicholls consulted hastily with Mr Widger, and announced the award as follows:--

"We consider Captain Hunken's ploughin' to be the very worst ploughin'

we've ever seen. But we award him the prize all the same, because we don't consider Captain Hocken's ploughin' to be any ploughin' at all."

_Solvuntur risu tabulae_--They can laugh, too, at Troy!

CHAPTER XIX.

ROSES AND THREE-PER-CENTS.

Although in her rose-garden--the rose-garden proper--Mrs Bosenna grew all varieties of "Hybrid Perpetuals" (these ranked first with her, as best suited to the Cornish soil and climate), with such "Teas" and "Hybrid Teas" as took her fancy, and while she pruned these plants hard in spring, to produce exhibition blooms, sentiment or good taste had forbidden her to disturb the old border favourites that lined the pathway in front of the house, or covered its walls and even pushed past the eaves to its chimneys. Some of these had beautified Rilla year by year for generations: the Provence cabbage-roses, for instance, in the border, the Crimson Damask and striped Commandant Beaurepaire; the moss-roses, pink and white, the China rose that bloomed on into January by the porch. These, with the Marechal Niel by her bedroom window, the scented white Banksian that smothered the southern wall, and the climbing Devoniensis that nothing would stop or stay until its flag was planted on the very roof-ridge, had greeted her, an old man's bride, on her first home-coming. They had, in the mysterious way of flowers, soothed some rebellion of young blood and helped to reconcile her to a lot which, for a shrewd and practical damsel, was, after all, not unenviable. She had no romance in her, and was quite unaware that the roses had helped; but she took a sensuous delight in them, and this had started her upon her hobby. A success or two in local flower-shows had done the rest.

Now with a rampant climber such as Rosa Devoniensis it is advisable to cut out each autumn, and clean remove some of the old wood; and this is no easy job when early neglect has allowed the plant to riot up and over the root-thatch. Mrs Bosenna had a particular fondness for this rose, and for the gipsy flush which separates it from other white roses as an unmistakable brunette. Yet she was sometimes minded to cut it down and uproot it, for the perverse thing would persist on flowering at its summit, and William Skin, sent aloft on ladders--whether in autumn or spring to prune this riot, or in summer to reap blooms by the armful-- invariably did damage to the thatch.

Mrs Bosenna, then, gloved and armed with a pair of secateurs, stood next morning by the base of the Devoniensis holding debate with herself.

The issue--that she would decide to spare the offender for yet another year--was in truth determined; for already William Skin had planted one ladder against the house-wall and had shuffled off to the barn for another, to be hoisted on to the slope of the thatch, and there belayed with a rope around the chimney-stack. But she yet played with the resolve, taken last year, to be stern and order execution. She was still toying with it when the garden-gate clicked, and looking up, she perceived Captain Cai.

"Ah! . . . Good morning, Captain Hocken!"

Cai advanced along the pathway and gravely doffed his hat.

"Good morning, ma'am--if I don't intrude?"

"Not at all. In fact I was expecting you."

"Er--on which errand, ma'am?"

"--Which?" echoed Mrs Bosenna, as if she did not understand.

"Shall we take the more painful business first?" suggested Cai humbly.

"If indeed it has not--er--wiped out the other. The damage done yesterday to your field, ma'am--"

"Have you brought Captain Hunken along with you?" asked Mrs Bosenna, interrupting him.

"No, ma'am. He will be here in half an hour, sharp." Cai consulted his watch.

"You have stolen a march on him then?" she smiled.

Cai flushed. "No, again, ma'am. Er--in point of fact we tossed up which should call first."

"Then," said she calmly, "we'll leave that part of the business until he arrives; though, since it concerns you both, I can't see why you did not bring him along with you. Do you know," she added with admirable simplicity, "it has struck me once or twice of late that you and Captain Hunken are not the friends you were?"

Still Cai stared, his face mantling with confusion. This woman was an enigma to him. Surely she must understand? Surely she must have received that brace of letters to which she evaded all allusion?

And here was she just as blithely postponing all allusion to yesterday's offence!

But no; not quite, it seemed; for she continued--

"I cannot think why you two should challenge one another as you did yesterday, and make sillies of yourselves before a lot of farmers.

It--it humiliates you."

"We were a pair of fools," conceded Cai.

"What men cannot see somehow," she went on angrily, "is that it doesn't end there. That kind of thing humiliates a woman; especially when--when she happens to be cast on her own resources and it is everything to her to find a man she can trust."

Mrs Bosenna threw into these words so much feeling that Cai in a moment forgot self. His awkwardness fell from him as a garment.

"You may trust me, ma'am. Truly you may. Tell me only what I can do."

At this moment William Skin--a crab-apple of a man, whose infirmity of deafness had long since reduced all the world for him to a vain tolerable show, in which so much went unexplained that nothing caused surprise--came stumbling around the corner of the house with a waggon-rope and a second ladder, which he proceeded to rest alongside the first one; showing the while no recognition of Cai's presence, even by a nod.

"I want you," said Mrs Bosenna, "to invest a hundred pounds for me.

Oh!"--as Cai gave a start and glanced at Skin--"we may talk before him: he's as deaf as a haddock."

"A hundred pounds?" queried Cai, still in astonishment.

"Yes; it's a sum I happen to have lyin' idle. At this moment it's in the Bank, on deposit, where they give you something like two-and-a-half only: and in the ordinary way I should put it into Egyptian three per cents, or perhaps railways. My poor dear Samuel always had a great opinion of Egypt, for some reason. He used to say how pleasant it was in church to hear the parson readin' about Moses and the bulrushes, and the plague of frogs and suchlike, and think he had money invested in that very place, and how different it was in these days. Almost in his last breath he was beggin' me to promise to stick to Egyptians, or at any rate to something at three per cent and gilt-edged: because, you see, he'd always managed all the business and couldn't believe that women had any real sense in money affairs. . . . I didn't make any promise, really; though in a sort of respect to his memory I've kept on puttin' loose sums into that sort of thing. Three per cent is a silly rate of interest, when all is said and done: but of course the poor dear thought he was leavin' me all alone in the world, with no friend to advise. . . ."

"I see," said Cai, his heart beginning to beat fast. "And it's different now?"

"I--I was hopin' so," said Mrs Bosenna softly.

Cai glanced at the back of William Skin, who had started to hum--or rather to croon--a tuneless song while knotting a rope to the second ladder. No: it was impossible to say what he wished to say in the presence of William Skin, confound him! Skin's deafness, Skin's imperturbability, might have limits. . . .

"You wish me to advise you?" he controlled himself to ask.

"No, I don't. I wish you--if you'll do me the favour--just to take the money and invest it without consultin' me. It's--well, it's like the master in the Bible--the man who gave out the talents. . . . Only don't wrap it in a napkin!" She laughed. "I don't even want to be told _what_ you do with the money. I'd rather not be told, in fact.

I want to trust you."

"Why?"

She laughed again, this time more shyly. "'Trust is proof,'" she answered, quoting the rustic adage. "You have given me some right to make that proof, I think?"

Ah--to be sure--the letters! She must, of course, have received his letter, along with 'Bias's, though this was her first allusion to it.

. . . Cai's brain worked in a whirl for some moments. She was offering him a test; she was yielding upon honest and prudent conditions; she was as good as inviting him to win her. . . . To do him justice, he had never--never, at any rate, consciously--based his wooing on her wealth.

For aught he cared, she might continue to administer all she possessed.

The comforts of Rilla Farm may have helped to attract him, but herself had been from the first the true spell.

He did not profess any knowledge of finance. A return of four per cent on his own modest investments contented him, and he left these to Mr Rogers.

"Ah!"