“’Not a hitch from first to last—­the most successful Regatta we’ve had for years.’  Those were the very expressions that reached me.”

“We’ll do better next time,” Cai assured her, swallowing down the flattery.  “Believe it or not, I had trouble enough to keep things straight; and being one to fret when they’re not ship-shape—­”

“I know!” murmured Mrs Bosenna sympathetically.  “You could not bear to come away until you’d seen everything through.  Well, as it happens, there are people in Troy who recognise this; and it does me good to hear you talk about ‘next time.’  Though, to be sure, one can’t count next time on such perfect weather.”

“There’ll be rain in half an hour or less,” grunted ’Bias.

“Oh, not before the fireworks, surely?” she exclaimed in pretty dismay.  “Do say, now, Captain Hocken!”

She turned to Cai, and then—­

“Oh—­oh!” she cried as, far away up the harbour, the signal rocket shot hissing aloft and exploded with a tremendous detonation.  The roar of it filled their ears; but Cai scarcely heeded the roar.  It reverberated from shore to shore, and the winding creeks took it up, to re-echo it; but Cai did not hear the echoes.

For (it was no fancy!) a small hand had clutched at his arm out of the darkness and was clinging to it, trembling, for protection. . . .  Yes, it trembled there yet! . . .  He put a hand over it, to reassure it and at the same time to detain it.

He could not see her face.  The rocket was of the kind known as “fog detonator,” and scattered no light with its explosion.  He greatly desired to know whether her gaze was turned towards him or up at the dark sky, and this he could not tell.  But the hand lay under cover of his arm, and, as moments went by was not withdrawn. . . .

Half a minute passed thus, and then (oh, drat the fireworks after all!) a salvo of rockets climbed the sky—­luminous ones, this time.  As they shot up with a wroo—­oo—­sh! the hand was snatched away, gently, swiftly. . . .

They burst in balls of fire—­blue, green, yellow, crimson.  They lit up the garden so vividly that each separate leaf on the laurustinus bushes cast its own sharp shadow.  “O—­oh!” breathed Mrs Bosenna, but now on a very different note, and as though her whole spirit drank deep, quenching a celestial desire.  Cai, stealing a look, saw her profile irradiated, her gaze uplifted to the zenith.

The fiery shower died out, was extinct.  Across the party hedge the boy Palmerston was heard inquiring if that was the way the angels behaved in heaven.

“Moderately so,” responded the polite, high-pitched voice of Mrs Bowldler (who never could resist fireworks).  “Moderately so, but without the accompanyin’ igsplosion.  That is, so far as we are permitted to guess. . . .  And highly creditable to them,” it wound up, with sudden asperity, “considering the things they sometimes have to look down on!”