“He’s a truer.”

“Then, as a last resource, I have only to run you down.  So it’s easy.”

The sucking-pig was followed by a delectable junket with Cornish cream; and the junket—­when Dinah had removed the cloth—­by a plate of home-made biscuits, flanked by decanters of port and sherry.

“Widow’s port is the best, they say.”  Mrs Bosenna invited him to fill his glass without waiting for ceremony.  “You smoke?” she asked.

He confessed that he was without pipe or tobacco.  Dinah was summoned again, left the room after a whispered consultation, and returned with a small sheaf of clean churchwarden pipes and a cake of tobacco, dark in hue, somewhat dry but (as a quick inspection assured Captain Cai) quite smokeable.

“Now you’re to make yourself at ease,” said Mrs Bosenna, rising and moving to the door.  Captain Cai, remembering his manners, rose and held it open for her.  “The wine is at your elbow and (oh, believe me, I understand men!) when you’ve finished your smoke you will find me in the rose-garden.  That’s my real garden, though nothing to boast of at this time of the year.  But April’s the month for pruning tea-roses, and this weather in April is not to be missed.  I want to hear more of your friend; and when you are ready—­you are not to hurry—­Dinah will show you the way.”

Captain Cai, left alone, carved a pipeful of tobacco with his pocket-knife; chose a clay; filled, lit it, and smoked.  Two glasses of wine had sufficed him, for he was an abstemious man:  but, for all his hard life, he could enjoy comfort.  He found it here; in the good food, the generous liquor, the twinkle on the glass and decanter, the ill-executed but solid portraits on the walls, the hearthrug soft beneath his sole, the April combination of sunshine slanting through the window and a brisk but not oppressive coal fire on the hearth.

He smoked.  The tobacco (smuggled and purchased at low cost by the late Mr Bosenna) had been excellent in its time, and was palatable yet.

It stuck in Captain Cai’s conscience, however, and pricked it while he smoked, that he had given Mrs Bosenna a wrong impression of his friend.

`Bias a mere prize-fighter! `Bias of all people!  But that is what comes of laying stress on one particular accomplishment of an Admirable Crichton.

He ruminated on this:  finished his pipe:  and having knocked out the ashes thoughtfully on the bars of the grate, sought the back garden without the help of Dinah.

The rose-garden to the uninstructed eye was—­now in April—­but a wilderness of scrubby stunted thorns.  In the midst of it he found Mrs Bosenna, gloved, armed with a pair of secateurs, and engaged in cutting the thorns back to a few ugly inches.

She smiled as he approached.  “You don’t understand roses?” she asked.  “If you don’t, you’ll be surprised at my hard pruning.  If there’s real strength in the root, you can trust for June, no matter what a stick you leave.  The secret’s under the ground; or, as you may say, under the surface, as it is with folks.”