“A few pounds to be picked up out yonder,” commented Captain Cai, “if the tugs had any enterprise.”

Captain ’Bias reached out a hand for the telescope.  “That yawl—­the big fellow—­’d do better to take in her jib-tops’le.  The faster it’s pullin’ her through the water the more it’s pullin’ her to leeward.  She’d set two p’ints nigher with it down.”

“The fella can’t make up his mind about it, either:  keeps it shakin’ half the time.”

The two friends sat in ’Bias’s summerhouse, the scent of their tobacco mingling, while they discoursed, with the fragrance of late roses, nicotianas, lemon verbenas.  “Discoursed,” did I say?  Well, let the word pass:  for their talk was discursive enough.  But when at intervals one or the other opened his mouth, his utterance, though it took the form of a comment upon men and affairs, was in truth but the breathing of a deep inward content.  On the table between them Captain Cai’s musical box tinkled the waltz from “Faust.”

They had become house-occupiers early in May, and at first with a few bare sticks of furniture a-piece.  But by dint of steady attendance at the midsummer auctions they had since done wonders.  Captain Cai had acquired, among other things, a refrigerator, a linen-press, and a set of ‘The Encyclopaedia Britannica’ (edition of 1881); Captain ’Bias a poultry run (in sections) and a framed engraving of “The Waterloo Banquet,”—­of which, strange to say, he found himself possessor directly through his indifference to art; for, oppressed by the heat of the saleroom, he had yielded to brief slumber (on his legs) while the pictures were being disposed of, and awaking at the sound of his own name was aware that he had secured this bargain by an untimely and unpremeditated nod.

Such small accidents, however, are a part of the fun of house-furnishing.  On the whole our two friends had bought judiciously, and now looking around them, could say that their experiment had hitherto prospered; that, so far, the world was kind.

Especially were they fortunate (thanks to Fancy Tabb) precisely where bachelor householders are apt to miss good fortune—­in the matter of domestic service.  The boy Palmerston, to be sure, suffered from a trick—­acquired (Fancy assured them) under workhouse treatment and eradicable by time and gentle handling—­of bursting into tears upon small provocation or none.  But Mrs Bowldler was a treasure.  Of this there could be no manner of doubt; and in nothing so patently as in relation with the boy Palmerston did the gold in Mrs Bowldler’s nature—­ the refined gold—­reveal itself.

It was suspected that she had once been a kitchen-maid in the West End of London:  but a discreet veil hung over this past, and she never lifted it save by whatever of confession might be read into the words, “When we were in residence in Eaton Square,”—­with which she preluded all reminiscences (and they were frequent) of the great metropolis.  Her true test as a good woman she passed when—­although she must have known the truth, being a confirmed innocent gossip—­she chose to extend the same veil, or a corner of it, over the antecedents of Palmerston.  She said—­