“Well, and if so,” said Mrs Bosenna, “one can see what Providence was driving at, which is always a comfort. . . .  I was wondering now if you mind going and carrying him out to the garden somewhere.  He couldn’t take harm in this weather,—­under the box-hedge, for instance.”

Dinah shook her head.  “I couldn’, mistress; no really!”

“The chances are,” said Mrs Bosenna persuasively, “he wouldn’t say anything,—­anything like that again, not in a blue moon.”

“He said it to me first, and he said it to me again not ten minutes later.  But, o’ course, if you’re so confident, there’s nothing hinders your goin’ and takin’ him where you like.  If you ask my opinion, though, he don’t wait for no blue moons.  He turns ’em blue as they come.”

Mrs Bosenna tapped her foot yet more pettishly.  “It’s perfectly ridiculous,” she declared, “to be kept out of one’s own parlour by a bird!  Go and call in William Skin, and tell him to take away the nasty thing.”

“And him with a family?”

“He’s hard of hearin’,” said Mrs Bosenna.

“It’s a hardness you can t depend on.  I’ve knowed William hear fast enough,—­when he wasn’t wanted.  He’ll be wantin’ to know, too, why we can’t put the bird out for ourselves:  his deafness makes him suspicious. . . .  And what’s more,” wound up Dinah, “it won’t help us, one way or ’nother, whether he hears or not.  We shall go about thinkin he’s heard; and I tell ye, mistress, I shan’t be able to face that man again without a blush, not in my born life.”

“It’s perfectly ridiculous, I tell you!” repeated Mrs Bosenna, starting to her feet.  “Am I to be forced to breakfast in the kitchen because of a bird?”

“Then, if so be as you’re so proud as all that, why not go back to bed again, and I’ll bring breakfast up to your room.”

“Nonsense.  Where d’ye keep the beeswax?  And run you up to the little store-cupboard and fetch me down a fingerful of cotton-wool for my ears.  I’ll do it myself, since you’re such a coward.”

“’Tisn’t that I’m a coward, mistress—­”

“You’re worse,” interrupted her mistress severely.

“You never ought to know anything about such words, and it’s a revelation to me wherever you managed to pick them up.”

Dinah smoothed her apron.  “I can’t think neither,” she confessed, and added demurely, “It could never have been from the old master, for I’m sure he’d never have used such.”

Mrs Bosenna wheeled about, her face aflame.  But before she could turn on Dinah to rend her, the sound of a horn floated up from the valley.  Dinah’s whole body stiffened at once.  “The post!” she cried, and ran forth from the kitchen to meet it, without asking leave.  Letters at Rilla Farm were rare exceedingly, for Mrs Bosenna made a point of paying ready-money (and exacting the last penny of discount) wherever it was possible; so that bills, even in the shape of invoices, were few.  She