We were nearing the town by the way of Arwennack, and just here a turn of the road brought us in sight of a whitewashed cottage and put a period to my father’s discourse, as a garden gate flew open and out into the highway ran a lean young man with an angry woman in pursuit.  His shoulders were bent and he put up both hands to ward off her clutch.  But in the middle of the road she gripped him by the collar and caught him two sound cuffs on the nape of the neck.

She turned as we rode up.  “The villain!” she cried, still keeping her grip.  “Oh, protect me from such villains!”

“But, my good woman,” remonstrated my father, reining up, “it scarcely appears that you need protecting.  Who is this man?”

“A thief, your honour!  Didn’t I catch him prowling into my garden?  And isn’t it for him to say what his business was?  I put it to your honour”—­here she caught the poor wretch another cuff—­“what honest business took him into my garden, and me left a widow-woman these sixteen years?”

“Ai-ee!” cried the accused, still shielding his neck and cowering in the dust—­a thin ragged windlestraw of a youth, flaxen-headed, hatchet-faced, with eyes set like a hare’s.  “Have pity on me sirs, and take her off!”

“Let him stand up,” my father commanded.  “And you sir, tell me—­ What were you seeking in this good woman’s garden?”

“A rose, sir—­hear my defence!—­a rose only, a small rose!” His voice was high and cracked, and he flung his hands out extravagantly.  “Oh, York and Lancaster—­if you will excuse me, gentlemen—­that I should suffer this for a mere rose?  The day only just begun too!  And why, sirs, was I seeking a rose?  Ay, there’s the rub.”  He folded his arms dramatically and nodded at the woman.  “There’s the gall and bitterness, the worm in the fruit, the peculiar irony—­if you’ll allow me to say so—­of this distressing affair.  Listen, madam!  If I wanted a rose of you, ’twas for your whole sex’s sake:  your sex’s, madam—­every one of whom was, up to five or six months ago, the object with me of something very nearly allied to worship.”

“Lord help the creature!” cried the woman.  “What’s he telling about?  And what have you to do with my sex, young man? which is what the Lord made it.”

“It is not, madam.  Make no mistake about it:  ’twere blasphemy to think so.  But speaking generally, what I—­as a man—­have to do with your sex is to protect it.”

“A nice sort of protector you’d make!” she retorted, planting her knuckles on her hips and eyeing him contemptuously.

“I am a beginner, madam, and have much to learn.  But you shall not discourage me from protecting you, though you deny me the rose which was to have been my emblem.  Every woman is a rose, madam, as says the poet Dunbar—­

    “’Sweet rose of vertew and of gentilness,
      Richest in bonty and in bewty clear
      And every vertew that is werrit dear,
      Except only that ye are merciless—­”