"Well, if you must know, I've called to consult Mrs Bosenna on a private matter of business."
This was a neat enough hint; yet strange to say it missed fire.
'Bias sucked at his pipe without budging, and answered—
"Same here."
"Please be seated, Captain Hocken," said Mrs Bosenna, covering inward merriment with the demurest of smiles. "You shall tell me your business later on—that's to say, if there's no pressing hurry about it?"
"There's no pressin hurry," admitted Cai. "It's important, though, in a way—important to me; and any ways more important than smokin' a pipe an' watchin' you play parlour games."
"That," said 'Bias sententiously, withdrawing his pipe from his lips, "isn' business, but pleasure."
"You may not believe it, Captain Hocken," protested Mrs Bosenna, "but 'spillikins' helps me to fix my thoughts. And you ought to feel flattered, really you ought—"
She laughed now, and archly—"Because, as a fact, I was fixing them on you at the very moment Dinah showed you in!" She threw him a look which might mean little or much. Cai took it to mean much.
"Ma'am,—" he began, but she had turned and was appealing to 'Bias.
"Captain Hunken and I were at that moment agreeing that a man of your abilities—a native of Troy, too—and, so to speak, at the height of his powers—ought not to be rusting or allowed to rust in a little place where so much wants to be done. For my part,"—her eyes still interrogated 'Bias,—"I could never live with a man, and look up to him, unless he put his heart into some work, be it farming, or public affairs, or what else you like. I put that as an illustration, of course: just to show you how it appeals to us women; and we do make up half the world, however much you bachelor gentlemen may pretend to despise us."