Dusk was falling when Cai returned.  Mrs Bowldler, aware that something was amiss, heard his footsteps in the passage and presented herself.

“Which, having been detained, we might make an ’igh tea of it,” she suggested, “and venture on the wing of a goose.  Stuffing at this hour I would ’ardly ’int at, being onion and apt to recur.”  But Captain Hocken desired no more than tea and toast.

Mrs Bowldler was intelligently sympathetic, because Fancy had called early in the afternoon and brought some enlightenment.

“There’s a row,” said Fancy, and told about the sale of the parrot.  “That Mrs Bosenna’s at the bottom of it, as I’ve said all along,” she concluded.

“Do you reelly think the bird has been talking?”

“I don’t think:  I know.”

Mrs Bowldler pondered a moment.  “Ho! well—­she’s a widow.”

“I reckon,” said Fancy, “if these two sillies are goin’ to fall out over her and live apart, you’ll be wantin’ extra help.  Two meals for every one—­I hope they counted that before they started to quarrel.”

“I’ll not have another woman in the house,” declared Mrs Bowldler, and repeated it for emphasis after the style of the great Hebrew writers.  “Another woman in the house have I will not!  What do you say, Palmerston?”

Palmerston, who had been on the edge of tears for some time, broke down and fairly blubbered.

“There’s a boy!” exclaimed the elder woman.  “Mention a little hard work and he begins to cry.”

“I don’t believe he’s cryin’ for that at all,” spoke up Fancy.  “Are you, Pammy dear?”

“Nun-nun-No-o!” sobbed Palmerston.

“He can’t abide quarrellin’—­that’s what’s the matter. . . .  Ah, well!” sighed Fancy, and fell back on her favourite formula of resignation.  “It’ll be all the same a hundred years hence; when we mee-eet,” she chanted, “when we mee-eet, when we mee-eet on that Beyewtiful Shore! And in the meantime we three have got to sit tight an’ watch for an openin’ to teach ’em that their little hands were never made.  No talkin’ outside, mind!”

“As if I should!” protested Mrs Bowldler, and added thoughtfully, “I often wonder what happens to widows.”

“They marry again, mostly.”

“I mean up there—­on the Beautiful Shore, so to speak.  They don’t marry again, because the Bible says so:  but how some contrytomps is to be avoided I don’t see.”

Chiefly through the loyalty of these three, some weeks elapsed before the breach of friendship between Captain Caius Hocken and Captain Tobias Hunken became a matter of common talk.  Mr Rogers must have had an inkling; for the pair consulted him on all their business affairs and investments, and in two or three ships their money had meant a joint influence on the shareholders’ policy.  Now, as they came to him separately, and with suggestions that bore no sign of concerted thought, so astute an adviser could hardly miss a