This was by the gate of a broad-acred field ("Parc Veor" she had called it) in which her Jerseys browsed. Captain Cai counted them—they were five—while still half-consciously searching for pipe and pouch, which, in fact, he had left behind in the shop, in the pockets of his old coat. By-and-by he realised this, and with a curious sense of helplessness—of having lost his bearings. . . .
Ten minutes later Dinah, coming across the mowhay to invite Captain Cai into the house, found him leaning against the gate, sunk in a brown study, contemplating the kine.
The smell of roasted sucking-pig dissipated this transient cloud upon his spirits. Mrs Bosenna (who had discarded her apron, and looked mighty genteel with a gold locket dependent from her throat) avowed, appealing to his sympathy, that it mightn't be sentimental, but she, for her part, adored the savour of crackling.
"And as for Robert—my late husband—he doted on it."
Captain Cai came within an ace of saying fatuously it was a pity the late Mr Bosenna couldn't be present to partake of this; but checked himself.
"To think that you should have met him! Well, it's a small world."
"There's a lot of folks attend Summercourt Fair—or used to," said Captain Cai, and added that the world was not so noticeably small, if you tried sailing up and down it a bit.
"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs Bosenna, dropping knife and fork and clasping her hands. "Yes, to be sure, the vastness of it—the great distances! . . . And so you met my late husband in a boxing tent? Sport of all kinds appealed to him. But isn't boxing a-er—more or less degrading exhibition?"
"Nothing of the sort, ma'am. I never went in for it myself—worse luck; never had the time. But my friend 'Bias, now! He's past his prime, o' course; but if only you'd seen him strip—in the old time—"
"Er—you're surely not referring to your friend Captain Hunken?"