“I’ve brought mine, too,” replied Cai.  “Well, we’ll leave it to Mrs Bosenna to settle.”

They walked up to the house in silence.  Dinah, who answered the bell, appeared to be somewhat upset at sight of the two on the doorstep together. (Yet we know that Dinah never opened the front door without a precautionary survey.) She admitted them to the front parlour, and opining that her mistress was somewhere’s about the premises, departed in search of her.

’Bias took up a position with his back to the fire and his legs a-straddle.  Cai stuck his hands in his pockets and stared gloomily out of window.  For some three minutes neither spoke, then Cai, of a sudden, gave a start.

“There’s that Middlecoat!” he exclaimed.

“Hey?” ’Bias hurried to the window, but the young farmer had already passed out of sight.

“Look here,” suggested Cai, “it’s just an well we turned up, one or both.  That man’s a perfect bully, so she tells me.”

“She’ve told me the same, more than once.”

“Always pickin’ some excuse for a quarrel.  It ain’t right for a woman to live alongside such a neighbour unprotected.”

“So I’ve told her.”

“Well, he’s in the devil of a rage just now,—­to judge by the look of him, an’ the way he was smackin’ his leg with an ash-plant as he went by.”

“Was he now?” ’Bias considered for a moment.  “You may depend he took advantage, not expectin’ either of us to turn up to-day. . . .  I shouldn’t wonder if the maid properly scared him with news we were here.”

Sure enough Dinah returned in a moment to report that her mistress was in her rose-garden; and following her thither, they found Mrs Bosenna, flushed of face and evidently mastering an extreme discomposure.

“I,—­I hardly expected you,” she began.

“It’s Friday,” said Cai.

“It’s Christmas Day,” said ’Bias.  “I reckon he counted on that,—­that Middlecoat, I mean.”

“Eh? . . .  Mr Middlecoat—­”

“Saw him takin’ his leave, not above three minutes ago.”

“You,—­you saw him taking his leave?”

“Stridin’ down the hill, angry as a bull,” Cai assured her.

“He’s a dreadful man to have for a neighbour,” confessed Mrs Bosenna, recovering grip on her composure.  “The way he threatens and bullies!”

“I’ll Middlecoat him, if he gives me but half a chance!” swore ’Bias.

“If I’d known either of you was in hail. . . .  But I reckoned you’d both be countin’ this for a Sunday.”

“Christmas Day isn’t Sunday, not more’n once in seven years,” objected ’Bias.

“It’s Friday this year,” said Cai, with simple conviction.

“Fiddlestick!” retorted ’Bias.  “You can’t make it out to be like an ordinary Friday—­I defy you.  There’s a—­a feelin’ about the day.”

“It feels like Friday to me,” maintained Cai.

But here Mrs Bosenna interposed. “’Twon’t feel like Christmas to me then if you two start arguin’.  ‘Peace and goodwill’ was the motto, as I thought; but I don’t see much of either abroad this afternoon.”