“Did you ever hear tell of a man called Burke?” he asked.

“’Course I did,” answered Mrs Bosenna, albeit the question startled her.  “My old nurse told me about him often.  He used to go about snatchin’ bodies.”

Cai considered a moment, and shook his head.  “I don’t think mine can be the same, or Benny wouldn’t have recommended him so highly.  There was another fellow that learned to be a speaker by practisin’ with his mouth full of pebbles, which struck me as too thoroughgoin’ altogether, and ‘specially when you’re aimin’ no higher than a Parish Council.  To be sure,” he confessed, “I did make a start with a brace of peppermint bull’s-eyes, and pretty nigh choked myself.  But Benny says that, for English public speakin’, there’s no such master as this Burke, and so I’ve sent for him.”

“Gracious!” exclaimed Mrs Bosenna.  “Won’t he charge a terrible lot?—­ with travellin’ expenses too!”

“His works, I mean.  The man’s dead, and they’re in six volumes.”

“You’ll never get through ’em then, between this and Whitsuntide.  If I was you, I’d keep on at the peppermints.”

Although the six volumes of Edmund Burke duly arrived, and Cai made a bold attempt upon their opening tractate, “A Vindication of Natural Society,”—­thereby hopelessly bemusing himself, since he accepted its ironical arguments with entire seriousness—­in the end he took a shorter way and procured Mr Benny to write his speeches for him.

These he got by heart in the course of long morning rambles; these he rehearsed with their accomplished author; these he declaimed in the solitude of his bed-chamber—­until, one day, Mrs Bowldler (whom terror arresting, had held spellbound for some minutes on the landing) knocked in to know if Palmerston should run for the doctor.

By dint (or in spite) of them at the election of Parish Councillors Cai headed the poll with a total of 411 votes.  ’Bias, who received 366, came fourth on the list of elected:  but this was no disgrace—­a triumph rather—­for one who had omitted to be born in the town.  By general consent the honours stood easy; though, on the strength of his poll, the new Council began by choosing Cai for its chairman.  On him Troy laid thereby the chief responsibility for the Jubilee festivities now but two months ahead.

At this first Council meeting, and at the meetings of many committees subsequently called to make preparation for the great day, ’Bias said very little.  Those—­and they were many—­who had looked for “ructions” between the two rivals, and had taken glee of the prospect, suffered complete disappointment.

“You see,” he explained to Mr Rogers, “I don’t hold by several things Cai Hocken and the Committee are doin’.  But they be doin’ ’em in the Queen’s honour, after their lights:  and ’tisn’t fitly to use the occasion for quarrellin’.  There’s only one way o’ forcin’ a quarrel on me where Queen Victoria’s consarned, and that is by speakin’ ill of her.”