“What’s that?” asked Mr Philp.

“It’s—­it’s a cuff,” Captain Cai admitted.

“Belongs to the Widow Bosenna, I shouldn’t wonder?” Mr Philp hazarded with massive gravity.  “It’s the sort o’ thing a woman wears now-a-days when she’ve lost her husband.  I follows the fashions in my distant way.”  He paused and corrected himself carefully—­“Them sort.”

“I thought—­it occurred to me—­as it might be the handiest way of returnin’ the thing.”

“It seems early days to be carryin’ that sort of article around in the crown o’ your hat.  Dangerous, too, if you use hair-oil.  But you don’t.  I took notice that you said ‘no’ yesterday when Toy offered to rub something into your hair.  Now that’s always a temptation with me, there bein’ no extra charge. . . .  Did she give it to you?”

“Who? . . .  Mrs Bosenna?  No, she left it behind here.”

“When?”

“Yesterday evening.”

“What was she doin’ here, yesterday evenin’, to want to take off her cuffs?”

“If you must know, she was planting roses.”

“What?  In April? . . .  You mustn’t think I’m curious.”

“Not at all,” Captain Cai agreed grimly.

“Nice little place you’ve pitched on here, I must say.”  Mr Philp changed his tone to one of extreme affability.  “There’s not a prettier little nest in all Troy than these two cottages.  And which of the pair might be your choice?”

“It’s not quite decided.”

“Well, you can’t do wrong with either.  But”—­Mr Philp glanced back across the roadway and lowered his voice—­“I’d like to warn you o’ one thing.  I don’t know no unhandier houses for gettin’ out a corpse.  There’s a turn at the foot o’ the stairs; most awk’ard.”

“I reckon,” said Captain Cai cheerfully, “‘Bias an’ me’ll leave that to them as it concerns.  But, man! what a turn you’ve a-got for funerals!”

“They be the breath o’ life to me,” Mr Philp confessed, and paused for a moment’s thought.  “Tell ’ee what we’ll do:  you shall come with me down to Fore Street an’ buy yourself a new hat at Shake Benny’s:  ’tis on your way to Rilla Farm.  There in the shop you can hand me over the one you’re wearin’, and Shake can send mine home in a bandbox.”  He twinkled cunningly.  “I shall be wantin’ a bandbox, an’ that gets me one cost-free.”

The man was inexorable.  Captain Cai gave up resistance, and the pair descended the hill together towards Mr Benny’s shop.

Young Mr Benny, “S.  Benny, Gents’ Outfitter,” had suffered the misfortune to be christened Shakespeare without inheriting any of the literary aspirations to which that name bore witness.  It was, in any event, a difficult name to live up to, and so incongruous with this youth in particular that, as he grew up, his acquaintances abbreviated it by consent to Shake; and, again, when, after serving an apprenticeship with a pushing firm in Exeter, he returned to open a haberdashery shop in his native town, it had been reduced, for business purposes, to a bare initial.