"It's Friday this year," said Cai, with simple conviction.

"Fiddlestick!" retorted 'Bias. "You can't make it out to be like an ordinary Friday--I defy you. There's a--a _feelin'_ about the day."

"It feels like Friday to me," maintained Cai.

But here Mrs Bosenna interposed. "'Twon't feel like Christmas to _me_ then if you two start arguin'. 'Peace and goodwill' was the motto, as I thought; but I don't see much of either abroad this afternoon."

The pair started guiltily and avoided each other's eyes. Many a time in distant ports they had talked together of Christmas in England and of Christmas fare--the goose, the plum-pudding. They had promised themselves a rare dinner to celebrate their first Christmas in England, and it had come to--what? To a dull meal eaten apart, served by a Mrs Bowldler on the verge of tears, and by a Palmerston frankly ravaged by woe. It had happened--happened past recall, and as Mrs Bowldler had more than once observed in the course of the morning, the worst was not over yet. "For," as she said, "out of two cold geese and two cold puddings I'll trouble you this next week for your entrays and what-not."

"What was Middlecoat's business, ma'am?--makin' so bold," inquired 'Bias.

"Oh!" she answered quickly, "he's a terrible young man! Wants his own way in everything, like most farmers, and turns violent when he can't get it. . . . He came about next week's sale, among other things."

"What sale, ma'am?"

"Why, surely you must have seen? The bills have been out for days.

Squire w.i.l.l.yams is gettin' rid of his land this side of the stream, right down from here to the railway station. Fifty acres you may call it; the most of it waste or else coppice,--and coppice don't pay for cuttin'. You've almost to go down on your knees before anybody will cart it away."

"I _did_ hear some word of it down in Toy's shop, now I come to think,"

said Cai. "But if the land's worthless--"

"It's worth little enough to any one but me and Mr Middlecoat. You see, it marches right alongside our two farms, between them and the Railway Company's strip along the waterside, and--well, Rilla's freehold and Middlecoat's is freehold, and it's nature, I suppose, to be jealous of any third party interlopin'. But I don't want the land, and so I've told him; nor I won't bid against him and run up the price,--though that's what they're aimin' at by an auction."

"Then what in thunder does the fellow want?" demanded 'Bias.

"If you'll climb 'pon the hedge yonder--that's my boundary--you'll see a little strip of a field, not fifty yards wide, runnin' down this side of the plantation. It widens a bit, higher up the hill, but 'tis scarcely more than a couple acres, even so. Barton's Orchard, they call it."

"But what about it?" asked Cai, craning his neck over to examine the plot.

"Why, to be sure I want to take it in for my roses. It lies rather too near the trees, to be sure; but one could trench along the far side and fill the trench with concrete, to check their roots from spreadin' this way; and all the soil is good along this side of the valley."

"Then why not buy it, ma'am, since 'tis for sale? Though for my part,"

added Cai, looking round upon the beds which, just now, were unsightly enough, with stiff leafless shoots protruding above their winter mulch, "I can't think what you want with more roses than you have already."

"One can never have too many roses," declared Mrs Bosenna. "Let be that there's new ones comin' out every year, faster than you can keep count with them. Folks'll never persuade me that the old H.P.'s don't do best for Cornwall; but when you go in for exhibition there's the judges and their fads to be considered, and the rage nowadays is all for Teas and high centres. . . . When first I heard as that parcel of ground was likely to come in the market, I sat down and planned how I'd lay it out with three long beds for the very best Teas, and fence off the top with a rose hedge--Wichurianas or Penzance sweet briars--and call it my Jubilee Garden; next year bein' the Diamond Jubilee, you know. All the plants could be in before the end of February, and I'll promise myself that by June, when the Queen's day came round, there shouldn't be a loyaller-bloomin' garden in the land."

"Well," allowed Cai, "that's sensibler anyway than puttin' up arches and mottoes. But what's to prevent ye?"

"'Tis that nasty disagreeable Mr Middlecoat," answered Mrs Bosenna pettishly. "He comes and tells me now as that strip has always been the apple of his eye. . . . It's my belief he wants to grow roses against me; and what's more, it's my belief he'd swallow up all Rilla if he could; which is better land than his own, acre for acre. It angers him to live alongside a woman and be beaten by her at every point o'

farmin'."

"But you've the longer purse, ma'am, as I understand," suggested 'Bias.

"Talkin' o' which--" He fumbled in his breast-pocket and produced an envelope.

"My rent, ma'am."

"Ay, to be sure: and mine, ma'am," Cai likewise produced his rent.

"You are the most punctual of tenants!" laughed Mrs Bosenna, taking the two envelopes. "But after all, they say, short reckonin's make long friends."

She divided a glance between them, to be shared as they would.

"But as I was suggestin' ma'am--why not attend the sale and outbid the fellow?"

"So I can, of course: and so I will, perhaps. Still it's not pleasant to live by a neighbour who thinks he can walk in and hector you, just because you're a woman."

"You want protection: that's what you want," observed 'Bias fatuously.

"In your place," said Cai with more tact, "I should forbid him the premises."

For some reason Mrs Bosenna omitted to invite them to stay and drink tea: and after a while they took their leave together. At the foot of the descent, as they gained the highroad, Cai faced about and asked, "Which way?"

"I was thinkin' to stretch my legs around Four Turnin's," answered 'Bias, although as a matter of fact the intention had that instant occurred to him.

"Well, so long!" Cai nodded and turned towards the town. "Compliments of the season," he added.

"Same to you."

They walked off in opposite directions.

On his way home through the town Cai took occasion to study the Bill of Auction on one of the h.o.a.rdings. It advertised the property in separate small lots, of which Barton's Orchard figured as No. 9. The bill gave its measurement as 1 acre, 1 rood, 15 perches. The sale would take place at the Ship Hotel, Troy, on Monday, January 4,1897, at 2.30 P.M.

Messrs Dewy and Moss, Auctioneers.

In the course of the next week he made one or two attempts to sound Mrs Bosenna and a.s.sure himself that she meant to attend the sale and secure Lot 9; but she spoke of it with an irritating carelessness. Almost it might have persuaded him--had he been less practised in her wayward moods--that she had dismissed the affair from her mind. But on Friday (New Year's Day) as he took leave of her, she recurred to it.

"Dear me," said she meditatively, "I shall not be seeing you for several days, shall I?"

"Eh? Why not?"

"To-morrow's Sat.u.r.day; then Sunday's our day of rest, as Dinah calls it.

On Monday's the auction--"

"Ah, to be sure!" Cai had forgotten this consequence of it, and was dashed in spirits for the moment. "But I shall see you there?"

"Perhaps," she answered negligently. "Shall you be attendin'?

Really, now!"

With an accent of reproach he asked how she could imagine that a business so nearly concerning her could find him other than watchful.

On leaving he repeated his good wishes for the twelvemonth to come, and with a warmth of intention which she perversely chose to ignore.

To be sure he meant to attend the sale. Nor was he surprised on entering the Ship Inn next Monday, some ten minutes ahead of the advertised time, to find 'Bias in the bar with a gla.s.s of hot brandy and water at his elbow. Cai ordered a rum hot.

"Where's the auction to be held?" he inquired of Mr Oke, the landlord.

"Long Room as usual." Mr Oke jerked a thumb towards the stairs; and Cai, having drained his gla.s.s, went up.

In the Long Room, which is a handsome apartment with waggon roof and curious Jacobean mouldings dating from the time when The Ship was built to serve as "town house" for one of Troy's great local families, Cai found a spa.r.s.e company waiting for the sale to open, and noted with momentary dismay that Mrs Bosenna had not yet arrived. But after all, he reflected, there was no need for extreme punctuality, it would take the auctioneer some time to reach Lot 9.