"Committee-meeting, to-night?" asked 'Bias.
"Eight o'clock: to settle up details—mark-boats, handicap, and the like. . . . It's a wonder to me," said Cai reflectively, "how this regatta has run on, year after year. With Bussa for secretary, if you can understand such madness."
"They'll be runnin' you for the next Parish Council, sure as fate."
Cai ignored this. "There's the fireworks, too. Nobody chosen yet to superintend 'em, an' who's to do it I don't know, unless I take over that little job in addition."
"I thought the firm always sent a couple o' hands to fix an let 'em off."
"So it does. They arrived a couple of hours ago—both drunk as Chloe."
"Plenty o' time to sleep it off between this an' then," opined 'Bias comfortably.
"But they're still on the drink. Likely as not we shall find 'em to-morrow in Highway lock-up, which is four miles from here. . . . It happened once before," said Cai with a face of gloom, "and Bussa did the whole display by himself."
"Good Lord! How did it go off?"
"He can't remember, except that it did go off. He was drunk, too— drunk o' purpose: for, as he says very reas'nably, 'twas the only way he could find the courage. The fellow isn' without public spirit, if he'd only apply it the right way. Toy tells me that he, for his part, saw it from his bedroom window—the Town Quay wasn't safe, wi' the rocket-sticks fairly rainin'—an' the show wasn' a bad show, if you looked at it horizontal; but the gentry on the yachts derived next to no enjoyment from it, bein' occupied in gettin' up their anchors."