“You may tell me, if you please,” replied Mr Benny, himself somewhat mystified, but playing for safety.  “You may tell me, of course, that ’tis not Captain Hunken but another man altogether:  as different from Captain Hunken as you might be, for instance.”

Cai started.  He was not good at duplicity, but managed to parry the suggestion.  “We’ll suppose it is my friend, ’Bias,” said he; “though ’Bias would be amused if he heard it.”

“Very well—­very well indeed!” Mr Benny laid down his pen, rubbed his hands softly, and picked up the pen again.  “Now we can get to work. . . . ’Honoured Madam’—­Shall we begin with ‘Honoured Madam’?  Or would you prefer something a trifle more—­er—­impassioned?  Perhaps we had better open—­er—­warily—­if I may advise, and (so to speak) warm to our subject. . . .  There is an art, Captain Hocken, even in composing and inditing a proposal of marriage. . . .  ’Honoured Madam—­You will doubtless be surprised by the purport of this letter—­’ Will she be surprised, by the way?”

“Cert’nly,” Cai answered.  “We agreed this is from ’Bias, remember.”

“Yes, yes. . . .  She will like it to be supposed that she’s surprised, any way.  All ladies do. ’_—­as by the communication I find myself impelled to make to you._’ I word it thus to suggest that you—­that Captain Hunken, rather—­cannot help himself:  that the lady has made, in the most literal sense, a conquest.  A feeling of triumph, sir, is in the female breast, whether of maiden or widow, inseparably connected with the receipt of such a communication.  Without asking Captain Hunken’s leave—­eh?—­we will flatter that feeling a little—­and portray him as the victim of this particular lady’s bow and spear.  A figurative expression.”

“Oh!” said Cai, who had begun to stare.  “Well, go on.”

“’Surprised, I say; yet not (I hope) affronted; in any event not unwilling to pardon, recognising that these words flow from the dictates of an emotion which, while in itself honourable, is in another sense notoriously no respecter of persons.  Love, Honoured Madam, has its votaries as well as its victims.  I have never accounted myself, nor have I been accounted, in the former category—­’”

“What’s a category?” asked Cai.

Mr Benny scratched out the word.  “We will substitute ‘case,’” said he, “and save Captain Hunken the trouble of an explanation. ’I am no longer—­you will have detected it, so why should I pretend?—­in the first flush of youth:  no passionate boy’—­We are talking of Captain Hunken, remember.”

Cai nodded.  “It’s true as gospel, Mr Benny.  But you have a wonderful way o’ putting things.”