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 cushion disposed in the stern-sheet added a touch of luxury to this pomp and circumstance.  It might not rival the barge of Cleopatra upon Cydnus; but the shore-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 Ship, a cable’s length up the river, the penultimate race (ran-dan pulling-boats) was finishing 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 classical but none the less immemorial air of “Off She goes to Wallop the Cat.”

The crowd parted and made passage 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 sex’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 pass.

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, snatched 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 assured 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.”