Hocken and Hunken Part 43

His mind had caught, of a sudden, at a really brilliant idea.

"I accept," said he firmly, looking Mrs Bosenna hard in the eyes, and her eyes sank under his gaze.

"Hi! Heads!" sang out a voice, and simultaneously the ladder which William Skin had been hauling aloft, came cras.h.i.+ng down and struck the flagged path scarcely two yards away.

A second later Cai had Mrs Bosenna in his arms. "You are not hurt?" he gasped.

She disengaged herself with a half-hysterical laugh. "Hurt?

Am I? . . . No, of course I am not."

"The d.a.m.ned rope slipped," growled William Skin in explanation, from his perch on the ladder under the eaves.

"Slipped?" Cai ran to the rope and examined it. "Of course it slipped, you lubber!" He stepped back on the pathway and spoke up to Skin as he would have talked on s.h.i.+pboard to a blundering seaman in the cross-trees. "Ain't a slip-knot _made_ to slip? And when a man's fool enough to tie one in place of a hitch--"

He cast off the rope, bent it around the rung with, as it seemed, one turn of the hand, and with a jerk had it firm and true.

"Make way, up there!" he called.

"You're never going to--to risk yourself," protested Mrs Bosenna.

"Risk myself? Lord, ma'am, for what age d'ye take me?" Cai caught up the slack of the rope and hitched it taut over his shoulder. He was rejuvenated. He made a spring for the ladder, and went up it much as twenty years ago he would have swarmed up the ratlines. "Make yourself small," he commanded, as Skin, at imminent risk of falling, drew to one side before his onset. Cai was past him in a jiffy, over the eaves, balancing himself with miraculous ease on the slippery thatch.

"Now ease up the ladder!"

He had anch.o.r.ed himself by pure trick of balance, and was pulling with a steady hand almost as soon as Skin, collecting his wits, could reach out to fend the ladder off from crus.h.i.+ng the edge of the eaves. Ten seconds later, by seaman's sleight of foot, he had gained a second anchorage half-way up the slope, had gathered up all the slack of the rope into a seaman's coil, and with a circular sweep of the arm had flung it deftly around the chimney. The end, instead of sliding down to his hand, hitched itself among the thorns of the rampant Devoniensis. Did this daunt him? It checked him for an instant only. The next, he had balanced himself for a fresh leap, gained the roof-ridges, and, seated astride of it, was hauling up the ladder, hand over fist, close to the chimney-base.

The marvel was, the close thatch showed no trace of having been trampled or disturbed.

"Darn the feller, he's as ajjile as a cat!" swore William Skin.

"Pa.s.s up the clippers, you below!" Cai commanded, forgetting that the man was deaf. "If your mistress'll stand back in the path a bit, I'll pick out the shoots one by one and hold 'em up for her to see, so's she can tell me which to cut away."

"You'll scratch your hands to ribbons," Mrs Bosenna warned him.

"'Tisn't worth while comin' down for a pair of hedgin' gloves. . . .

I say, though--I've a better notion! 'Stead of lettin' this fellow run riot here around the chimney-stack, why not have him down and peg him horizontal, more or less, across and along the thatch, where he can be seen?"

"Capital!" she agreed. "He'd put out more than twice the number of blooms too. They do always best when laid lateral."

"He'll come down bodily with a little coaxin'. The question is how to peg him when he's down?"

"Rick-spars," answered Mrs Bosenna promptly. "The small kind. There's dozens in the waggon-house loft." She signalled to William Skin to come down, bawled an order in his ear, and despatched him to fetch a score or so.

"Hullo!" cried Cai, who, being unemployed for the moment, had leisure to look around and enjoy the view from the roof-ridge. "If it isn't 'Bias comin' up the path! . . . Hi! 'Bias!" he hailed boyishly, in the old friendly tone.

'Bias, stooping to unlatch the gate, heard the call which descended, as it were, straight from heaven, and gazed about him stupidly. He was aware of Mrs Bosenna in the pathway, advancing a step or two to make him welcome. She halted and laughed, with a glance up towards the roof.

'Bias's eyes slowly followed hers.

"Lord!" he muttered, "what made ye masthead him up there? . . . Been misbehavin', has he? 'Tis the way I've served 'prentices afore now."

"On the contrary, he has been behaving beautifully--"

"Here, 'Bias!" called down Cai again. "Heft along the tall ladder half a dozen yards to the s'yth'ard, and stand by to help. I'm bringin' down this plaguy rose-bush, and I'll take some catchin' if I slip with it."

"'Who ran and caught him when he fell?' 'His Bias,'" quoted Mrs Bosenna. "He has been doin' wonders up there, Captain Hunken. But if I were you--a man of your weight--"

"I reckon," said 'Bias, stepping forward and seizing the ladder, which he lifted as though it had been constructed of bamboo, "I han't forgot all I learnt o' reefin' off the Horn." He planted the ladder and had mounted it in a jiffy. "Now, then, what's the programme?" he demanded.

"You see this rose? Well, I got to collect it--I've tried the main stem, and it'll bend all right,--and then I got to slide down to you.

After that we've to peg it out somewheres above the eaves, as Madam gives orders. See?"

"I see. When you're ready, slide away."

Just then William Skin came hurrying back with an armful of rick-spars: and within ten minutes the two rivals were hotly at work--yet cheerfully, intelligently, as though misunderstanding had never been,-- clipping out dead wood from the rose-bush, layering it, pegging it, driving in the spars,--while Mrs Bosenna called directions, and William Skin gazed, with open mouth.

"This is better than ploughin', ma'am?" challenged Cai in his glee.

"So much better," agreed the widow, smiling up, "that I've almost a mind to forgive the pair of you."

"But I won't ask you to stay for dinner to-day," she said later, when the tangled ma.s.s of the Devoniensis had been separated, shoot from shoot, and pegged out to the last healthy-looking twig, and the two men stood, flushed but safe, on the pathway beside her. She stole a confidential little glance at Cai. "For I understand from Captain Hocken that you prefer to make your excuses separately. I have already forgiven _him_: and it's only fair to give Captain Hunken his turn."

Who less suspicious than Cai? Had he been suspicious at all, what better rea.s.surance than the sly pressure of her hand as he bade her good-day? . . . Poor 'Bias!

Once past the gate, and out of sight, Cai felt a strange desire to skip!

"Well, mistress, you are a bold one, I must say!" commented Dinah that night by the kitchen fire, where Mrs Bosenna enjoyed a chat and, at this season of the year, a small gla.s.s of hot brandy-and-water, with a slice of lemon in it, before going to bed.

"I don't see where the boldness comes in," said the widow. She was studying the fire, and spoke inattentively.

"Two hundred pounds!"

"Eh? . . . There's no risk in that. You may say what you like of Captain Hocken or of Captain Hunken: but they're honest as children.

The money's as safe with them as in the bank."

"Well, it do seem to me a das.h.i.+n' and yet a very cold-blooded way of choosin' a man. Now, if I was taken with one--"

"Well?" prompted Mrs Bosenna, as Dinah paused.

"Call me weak, but I couldn't help it. I should throw myself straight at his head, an' ask him to trample me under his boots!"

"A nice kind of husband you'd make of him then!" said her mistress scornfully.

"I know, I know," agreed Dinah. "I've no power o' resistance at all, an' I daresay the Almighty has saved me a lifetime o' trouble.

'Twould ha' been desperet pleasant at the time though." She sighed.

"But to give two men a hundred pound each, an' choose the one that manages it best--"

"Worst," corrected Mrs Bosenna. "You ninny!" she went on with sovereign contempt. "Do you really suppose I'd marry a man that could handle my money, or was vain enough to suppose he could?"