But once I get the drift o' your cunning, 'tis easy as easy."

He gazed at Mr Benny and winked knowingly.

"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--impa.s.sioned?

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 subst.i.tute '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 pa.s.sionate 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."

In this way--Mr Benny scribbling, erasing, purring over a phrase and anon declaiming it--Cai venturing a question here and there, but always apologetically, with a sense of being carried off his feet and swept into deep waters--in half an hour the letter was composed. It was not at all the letter Cai had expected. It threw up his suit into a high romantic light in which he scarcely recognised it or himself. But he felt it to be extremely effective. His conscience p.r.i.c.ked him a little, as in imagination he saw 'Bias with head aslant and elbows sprawling, inking himself to the wrists in literary effort. Poor 'Bias!

But "all's fair in love and war."

To his mild astonishment Mr Benny declined a fee. "If, sir, you will be good enough to accept it, as between friends?" the little man suggested timidly. "You have helped me to pa.s.s a very pleasant morning: and it will be--shall I say?--something of a bond between us if, in the event, our joint composition should prove to have been instrumental in forwarding--er--Captain Hunken's suit."

Cai hesitated. At that moment he would have preferred conferring a benefit to receiving one. His conscience wanted a small salve.

Yet to refuse would hurt Mr Benny's feelings.

"I'll tell you what!" he suggested: "We'll throw it in with another favour I meant to ask of you, and for which you shall name your terms.

It has been suggested--by several, so there's no need to mention names-- that I ought to go in for public life, in a small way, of course."

"Indeed, Captain Hocken?" Mr Benny smiled to himself; he began to understand, or thought that he did. "A very laudable ambition, too!"

"The mischief is," confessed Cai, "that I have had no practice in speakin'. I couldn't, as they say, make a public speech for nuts."

"It is an art, Captain Hocken," said Mr Benny rea.s.suringly, "and can be acquired. An ambition to acquire it sir,--though in your mind you viewed it but as a means to an end,--would in my humble view be an ambition even more laudable than that of shining on the administrative side of public life. For it is not only an art, sir, and a great one.

It is well-nigh a lost art. Where, nowadays, are your Burkes, your Foxes, your Sheridans--not to mention your Demostheneses?"

"You'll understand," hesitated Cai, "that nothing beyond the School Board is in question at present. I mention this strictly between ourselves."

Mr Benny swung about upon his stool. "Listen to this, Captain Hocken-- 'Observe, sir, that, besides the desire which all men have naturally of supporting the honour of their own government, that sense of dignity and that security to property which ever attends freedom, has'--or, as I should prefer to say, _have_--'a tendency to increase the stock of the free community. Much may be taken where most is acc.u.mulated. And what is the soil or climate where experience has not uniformly proved that the voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty, bursting from the weight of heaped-up luxuriance, has ever run with a more copious stream of revenue, than could be squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed indigence by the straining of all the machinery in the world?'

That is Burke, sir--Burke: who, by the fribbles of his own day, was lightly termed the dinner-bell of the House of Commons, yet compelled the attention of all serious political thinkers--"

'Th' applause of listening Senates to command.'

"I divine your ambition. Captain Hocken, and I honour it,"

"So long as you don't mistake me," urged Cai nervously. "It don't go beyond a seat on the School Board at present. . . . But there was a hint dropped that you used, back-along, to give lessons in--I forget the word."

"Elocution," Mr Benny supplied it. "A guinea the course of six lessons was my old charge. Shall we say to-morrow, at eleven sharp?"

"So be it," Cai agreed. "The sooner the better--I've to catch up the lee-way of three-quarters of a lifetime."

When Cai had folded the draft of his letter, bestowed it in his breast-pocket, and taken his departure, Mr Benny drew out his watch.

It yet wanted a full hour of dinner-time. He rearranged the papers on his desk and resumed work upon the 'Fasti':--

"The hound beside the hare held consort in the shade, The hind, the lioness, upon the self-same rock, The too loquacious crow--"

Here some one knocked at the door.

"Come in!" called Mr Benny.

The door opened. The visitor was Captain Hunken.

"Good mornin'."

"Ah! Good morning, sir!"

"Busy?"

"Dallying, sir,--dallying with the Muses. That is all my business nowadays."

"I looked in," said 'Bias, laying down his hat, "to ask if you would do me a small favour."

"You may be sure of it, Captain Hunken: that is, if it should lie in my power."

'Bias nodded, somewhat mysteriously. "You bet it does: though, as one might say, it don't lie azackly inside the common. I want a letter written."

"Yes?"

"It ain't, as you might put it, an ordinary letter either. It's,--well, in fact, it's a proposal of marriage!"

Mr Benny rubbed the back of his head gently. "I have written quite a number in my time, Captain Hunken. . . . Is it--if I may put it delicately--in the first person, sir?"

"She's the first person--" began 'Bias, and came to a halt. "Does that matter," he asked, "so long as I describe the parties pretty accurate?"

"Not a bit," Mr Benny a.s.sured him. "A friend, shall we say?"

"That's right," 'Bias nodded solemnly.

"And the lady?--spinster or widow?"