"Try it yourself," he suggested wagging his head. "I have. You'll not be able to heave it off, that I promise you. That hat is there for good and all. Mistress Boozer will doubtless be buried in that bonnet." He cocked his head the other way. "And what do you think of that?" Ned Cilley enquired.
After a long and thoughtful pause Chris found his voice.
"Master Cilley," he said respectfully, "Does she—does she sleep in it?" he asked.
The picture of the elephantine Becky Boozer with a counter-pane under her chin and the hat with twenty-four red roses and twelve waving black plumes rising above the pillow took hold of the sailor's fancy. He tipped back in his chair and laughed till he cried, and as he was coughing and spluttering, Mistress Boozer herself came rustling out of the passageway and across the kitchen to the table.
"Be off with you, boy!" she cried. "You and Cilley—you're two of a kind, that is plain to be seen!"
She looked from one to the other and Chris decided that it was a good thing for him that Becky likened him to the object of her doting, Master Cilley.
"Get along with you!" she cried again, pulling Chris up out of his chair by his coat collar. "You are wanted by the master in his study, so look sharp! It's down the passage and to your right," Becky said, "and knock before you go in!"
Chris started off, but in the dusk of the passage he looked back in time to see Becky Boozer lost in tittering giggles and wild blushes as Master Cilley, reaching up as high as his arm would go, chucked her under the chin.