The pair started guiltily and avoided each other’s eyes.  Many a time in distant ports they had talked together of Christmas in England and of Christmas fare—­the goose, the plum-pudding.  They had promised themselves a rare dinner to celebrate their first Christmas in England, and it had come to—­what?  To a dull meal eaten apart, served by a Mrs Bowldler on the verge of tears, and by a Palmerston frankly ravaged by woe.  It had happened—­happened past recall, and as Mrs Bowldler had more than once observed in the course of the morning, the worst was not over yet.  “For,” as she said, “out of two cold geese and two cold puddings I’ll trouble you this next week for your entrays and what-not.”

“What was Middlecoat’s business, ma’am?—­makin’ so bold,” inquired ’Bias.

“Oh!” she answered quickly, “he’s a terrible young man!  Wants his own way in everything, like most farmers, and turns violent when he can’t get it. . . .  He came about next week’s sale, among other things.”

“What sale, ma’am?”

“Why, surely you must have seen?  The bills have been out for days.  Squire Willyams is gettin’ rid of his land this side of the stream, right down from here to the railway station.  Fifty acres you may call it; the most of it waste or else coppice,—­and coppice don’t pay for cuttin’.  You’ve almost to go down on your knees before anybody will cart it away.”

“I did hear some word of it down in Toy’s shop, now I come to think,” said Cai.  “But if the land’s worthless—­”

“It’s worth little enough to any one but me and Mr Middlecoat.  You see, it marches right alongside our two farms, between them and the Railway Company’s strip along the waterside, and—­well, Rilla’s freehold and Middlecoat’s is freehold, and it’s nature, I suppose, to be jealous of any third party interlopin’.  But I don’t want the land, and so I’ve told him; nor I won’t bid against him and run up the price,—­though that’s what they’re aimin’ at by an auction.”

“Then what in thunder does the fellow want?” demanded ’Bias.

“If you’ll climb ’pon the hedge yonder—­that’s my boundary—­you’ll see a little strip of a field, not fifty yards wide, runnin’ down this side of the plantation.  It widens a bit, higher up the hill, but ’tis scarcely more than a couple acres, even so.  Barton’s Orchard, they call it.”

“But what about it?” asked Cai, craning his neck over to examine the plot.

“Why, to be sure I want to take it in for my roses.  It lies rather too near the trees, to be sure; but one could trench along the far side and fill the trench with concrete, to check their roots from spreadin’ this way; and all the soil is good along this side of the valley.”

“Then why not buy it, ma’am, since ’tis for sale?  Though for my part,” added Cai, looking round upon the beds which, just now, were unsightly enough, with stiff leafless shoots protruding above their winter mulch, “I can’t think what you want with more roses than you have already.”