This was by the gate of a broad-acred field ("Parc Veor” she had called it) in which her Jerseys browsed.  Captain Cai counted them—­they were five—­while still half-consciously searching for pipe and pouch, which, in fact, he had left behind in the shop, in the pockets of his old coat.  By-and-by he realised this, and with a curious sense of helplessness—­of having lost his bearings. . . .

Ten minutes later Dinah, coming across the mowhay to invite Captain Cai into the house, found him leaning against the gate, sunk in a brown study, contemplating the kine.

The smell of roasted sucking-pig dissipated this transient cloud upon his spirits.  Mrs Bosenna (who had discarded her apron, and looked mighty genteel with a gold locket dependent from her throat) avowed, appealing to his sympathy, that it mightn’t be sentimental, but she, for her part, adored the savour of crackling.

“And as for Robert—­my late husband—­he doted on it.”

Captain Cai came within an ace of saying fatuously it was a pity the late Mr Bosenna couldn’t be present to partake of this; but checked himself.

“To think that you should have met him!  Well, it’s a small world.”

“There’s a lot of folks attend Summercourt Fair—­or used to,” said Captain Cai, and added that the world was not so noticeably small, if you tried sailing up and down it a bit.

“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs Bosenna, dropping knife and fork and clasping her hands.  “Yes, to be sure, the vastness of it—­the great distances! . . .  And so you met my late husband in a boxing tent?  Sport of all kinds appealed to him.  But isn’t boxing a-er—­more or less degrading exhibition?”

“Nothing of the sort, ma’am.  I never went in for it myself—­worse luck; never had the time.  But my friend ‘Bias, now!  He’s past his prime, o’ course; but if only you’d seen him strip—­in the old time—­”

“Er—­you’re surely not referring to your friend Captain Hunken?”

“But I am, ma’am. . . .  He had a way o’ stepping back an’ usin’ his reach . . . a trifle slow with the left, always . . . that was his failin’.  But the length of his arms would delight you—­and he had a hug, too, of his own—­if you happened to take an interest in such things.”

“But I don’t,” protested Mrs Bosenna.  “And you frighten me!  If I’d guessed that my other tenant was a prize-fighter—­”

“Prize-fighter, ma’am?  What, ’Bias? . . .  He’s the gentlest you ever knew, and the easiest-goin’:  and for ladies’ company—­well, I don’t know,” confessed Captain Cai, “as he ever found himself in such, least-ways not to my knowledge.  But I’ll be bound he wouldn’t be able to open his mouth.”

“—­Unless in defence of a friend,” suggested Mrs Bosenna, laughing.  “You must bring him to call on me.”

Captain Cai shook his head.

“Oh”—­she nodded confidently—­“I’ll make him talk, never fear!  If he’s half so true a friend to you as you are to him—­”