"'Tis curious now," said Cai to John Peter ten minutes later, "how your inquisitive man hates a question, just as your joker can't never face a joke that goes against him. I met Philp, just outside, with a carpet bag: and I no sooner asked what he was carryin' than he bolted like a hare."
"There's no secret about it, either," said John Peter. "He tells me that, for occupation, he has opened an agency for the Plymouth Dye and Cleanin' Works."
"And you've given him some clothes to be cleaned? Well, I don't see why he need be ashamed o' that."
"Well, I haven't, to tell you the truth. For my part, I like my clothes the better the more I'm used to 'em. But my sister's laid up with bronchitis."
"Miss Susan? . . . Nothin' serious, I hope?"
"She always gets it, in the fall o' the year. No, nothing serious. But the doctor says she must keep her bed for a week—and now she's got to. . . . There'll be a rumpus when she finds out," said John Peter resignedly: "for she don't like clean clothes any better than I do. But one likes to oblige a neighbour; and if he'd taken my trowsers 'twould ha' meant the whole household bein' in bed, which," concluded John Peter with entire simplicity, "would not only be awkward in itself, but dangerous when only two are left of an old family."
Cai agreed, if he did not understand. He reclaimed his musical box— needless to say, John Peter had not yet engraved the plate—and carried it home, promising to restore it when that adornment was ready. For the next night or two it soothed him somewhat while he smoked and meditated on public duties soon to engage his leisure. For he had been co-opted a member of the School Board in room of Mr Rogers, resigned: and in Barber Toy's shop it was understood that he would be a candidate not only for the Parish Council to be elected before Christmas, but for a Harbour Commissionership to fall vacant in the summer of next year.
The notification of his appointment on the School Board reached him by post on the last Tuesday in September. Now, as it happened, the Technical Instruction Committee of the County Council had arranged to hold at Troy, some four days later, an Agricultural Demonstration, with competitions in ploughing, hedging, dry-walling, turfing, the splitting and binding of spars, &c.
Behold, now, on the morning of the Demonstration, Captain Caius Hocken, School Manager and therefore ex officio a steward, taking the field in his Sunday best with a scarlet badge in his buttonhole, "quite," declared Mrs Bowldler, "like a gentleman of the French Embassy as used frequent to take luncheon with us in the Square."
The morning was bright and clear: the sky a pale blue and almost cloudless, the season—