"Look here," suggested Cai, "it's just an well we turned up, one or both. That man's a perfect bully, so she tells me."
"She've told me the same, more than once."
"Always pickin' some excuse for a quarrel. It ain't right for a woman to live alongside such a neighbour unprotected."
"So I've told her."
"Well, he's in the devil of a rage just now,—to judge by the look of him, an' the way he was smackin' his leg with an ash-plant as he went by."
"Was he now?" 'Bias considered for a moment. "You may depend he took advantage, not expectin' either of us to turn up to-day. . . . I shouldn't wonder if the maid properly scared him with news we were here."
Sure enough Dinah returned in a moment to report that her mistress was in her rose-garden; and following her thither, they found Mrs Bosenna, flushed of face and evidently mastering an extreme discomposure.
"I,—I hardly expected you," she began.
"It's Friday," said Cai.
"It's Christmas Day," said 'Bias. "I reckon he counted on that,—that
Middlecoat, I mean."