Hocken and Hunken Part 53

"Why, to enter for the cup you're givin' on Whit-Monday."

"You're mistaken," said Cai. "'Tis Mrs Bosenna that's givin' the cup, not I."

"What? With her own hands?"

"_To_ be sure. Why not?"

"Then that accounts for it," said Mr Philp gleefully, rubbing his hands.

"He's a deep one, is your friend Hunken! It did strike me as odd, too-- his givin' an order to Wyatt in all this hurry: but now I understand."

"Drat the man! what _is_ it you understand?"

"Why, as you know, Wyatt can knock him a sh.e.l.l together that'll win the race under everybody's nose. 'Tis a child's play, if you don't mind castin' the boat next day an' content yourself with scantlin' like a packin' case. At least, 'twould be child's play to any one but Wyatt, who can't help buildin' solid, to save his life. If the man had consulted me, I'd have recommended Mitch.e.l.l. Mitch.e.l.l never had a length o' seasoned wood in his store: he can't afford the capital.

But to my mind he can--take him as a workman--shape a boat better than Wyatt ever did yet."

"And to mine," Cai agreed.

"The cunning of it, too! He to take the prize from her under your nose and you standin' by and lookin' foolish. For, let alone the craft, they say Cap'n Hunken can handle a small boat to beat any man in this harbour. He cleared a whole prize-list out in Barbadoes, I've heard."

"What, 'Bias? Don't you be afraid. He can't steer a small boat for nuts."

"Dear me! Then I must have been misinformed, indeed."

"You have been," Cai a.s.sured him. "I reckon Mitch.e.l.l can knock up a boat to give fits to anything of Wyatt's; and if 'Bias--if Cap'n Hunken is countin' on Wyatt to help him put the fool on me, it may happen he'll learn better."

CHAPTER XXIII.

Pa.s.sAGE REGATTA.

"'Tis good to wear a bit of colour again," said Mrs Bosenna on Regatta morning, as she stood before her gla.s.s pinning to her bodice a huge bow of red, white, and blue ribbons. "Black never did become me."

"It becomes ye well enough, mistress, and ye know it," contradicted Dinah.

"'Tis monotonous, anyway. I can't see why we poor widow-women should be condemned to wear it for life."

"_You_ bain't," Dinah contradicted again, and added slily, "d'ye wish me to fetch witnesses?"

Her mistress, t.i.ttivating the ribbons, ignored the question.

"I do think we might be allowed to wear colours now and again--say on Sundays. As it is, I dare say many will be pickin' holes in my character, even for this little outbreak."

"There's a notion, now! Why, 'tis Queen Victory's Year--and a pretty business if one widow mayn't pay her respects to another!"

"It do always seem strange to me," Mrs Bosenna mused.

"What?"

"Why, that the Queen should be a widow, same as any one else."

"Low fever," said Dinah. "And I've always heard as the Prince Consort had a delicate const.i.tution."

"It happened before I was born," said Mrs Bosenna vaguely. "Think o'

that, now! . . . And yet 'twasn't the widowin' I meant so much as the marryin'. I can't manage to connect it in my mind with folks so high up in the world as Kings and Queens. 'Tis so intimate."

"You may bet Providence tempers it to 'em somehow," opined Dinah.

"If they didn' have families, what'd become o' English history?"

If any tongues wagged against Mrs Bosenna for wearing the patriotic colours that day, they were not heard in the holiday crowd at the Pa.s.sage Slip when, with nicely calculated unpunctuality, she arrived, at 11.32 (the time appointed having been 11.15), to be conveyed on board the Committee vessel. (It should be explained here that the aquatic half of Troy's Pa.s.sage Regatta is compressed within the forenoon: at midday Troy dines, and even on holidays observes Greenwich time for that event. Moreover, the afternoon sports of bicycle racing, steeplechasing, polo-bending, &c., were preluded in those days--before an electric-power station worked the haulage on the jetties--by a procession of huge horses, highly groomed and bedecked with ribbons: and this procession, starting at 1 P.M., allowed the avid holiday-keeper small margin for dallying over his meal.)

Mrs Bosenna reached the slip to find Cai waiting below in a four-oared boat which he had borrowed from the Clerk of the Course. A large red ensign drooped from a staff and trailed in the water astern: the crew wore scarlet stocking-caps: bright cus.h.i.+on disposed in the stern-sheet added a touch of luxury to this pomp and circ.u.mstance. It might not rival the barge of Cleopatra upon Cydnus; but the sh.o.r.e-crowd, under whose eyes it had been waiting for close upon twenty minutes, voted it to be a very creditable turn out; and Cai, watch in hand, was at least as impatient as Mark Antony. Off the Committee s.h.i.+p, a cable's length up the river, the penultimate race (ran-dan pulling-boats) was finis.h.i.+ng amid banging of guns and bursts of music from the "Troy Town Band,"

saluting the winner with "See the Conquering Hero Comes," the second boat with strains consecrated to first and second prize-winners in Troy harbour since days beyond the span of living memory, even as all races start to the less cla.s.sical but none the less immemorial air of "Off She goes to Wallop the Cat."

The crowd parted and made pa.s.sage for Mrs Bosenna to descend the slip-way: for Troy is always polite. Its politeness, however, seldom takes the form of reticence; and as she descended she drew a double broadside of neighbourly good-days and congratulations, with audible comments from the back rows on her personal appearance.

"Mornin', Mrs Bosenna--an' a brave breast-knot you're wearin'!"

"Han'some, id'n-a?"

"Handsome, sure 'nough!"

"Fresh coloured as the day she was wed. . . . Good mornin' ma'am!

Good mornin', Mrs Bosenna--an' a proper Queen o' Sheba you be, all glorious within."

"What a thing 'tis to have money!" remarked a meditative voice deep in the throng.

"Eh, Billy, my son, it cures half the ills o' life," responded another.

"'Tis a mysterious thing," hazarded a woman--"a dispensation you may call it, how black suits some complexions while others can't look at it."

"An' 'tis your s.e.x's perversity," spoke up a male, "that them it don't suit be apt to wear it longest"--whereat several laughed, for where everybody is good-humoured the feeblest witticism will pa.s.s.

Mrs Bosenna heard these comments, but acknowledged them only by a scarcely perceptible heightening of colour. She went down the slip-way royally, with Dinah in close attendance: and Cai, catching sight of her and pocketing his watch, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a boat-hook to draw the boat's quarter alongside the slip, while with his disengaged hand he lifted the brim of a new and glossy top-hat.

"Am I disgracefully late?" Without waiting for his answer, as he handed her aboard she exclaimed:

"Oh! and what a crowd of boats! . . . I never felt so nervous in all my life."

"There's no need," said Cai--who himself, two minutes before, had been desperately nervous. He seated himself beside her and took the tiller.

"Push her out, port-oars! Ready?--Give way, all! . . . There's no need," he a.s.sured her, sinking his voice; "I never saw ye look a properer sight. Maybe 'tis the bunch o' ribbon sets 'ee off--'Tis the first time ye've worn colour to my recollection."

"Dead black never suited me."

"I wouldn' say that. . . . But," added Cai upon a happy thought, "if that's so, you know where to find excuse to leave off wearin' it."

"Hus.h.!.+" she commanded. "How can you talk so with all these hundreds of eyes upon us?"