guess that something was wrong.  Nor did it greatly mend matters that each, on learning the other’s wish upon this or that point where it conflicted with his own, at once made haste to yield.  “If that’s how ’Bias looks at it,” Cai would say, “why o’ course we’ll make it so.  I must have misunderstood him:”  and ’Bias on his part would as promptly take back a proposal—­“Cai thinks otherwise, eh?  Oh, well that settles it!  We haven’t, as you might say, threshed it out together, but I leave details to him.”  “If you call this a detail—­” “Yes, yes:  leave it to Cai.”  Mr Rogers blinked, but asked no questions and kept his own counsel.

Mr Philp was more dangerous. (Who in Troy could keep Mr Philp for long off the scent of a secret?) But, as luck would have it, Cai in pure innocence routed Mr Philp at the first encounter.

It happened in this way.  Towards the end of the first week of estrangement Cai, who bore up pretty well in the day time with the help of Mr Rogers, Barber Toy, and other gossips, began to find his evenings intolerably slow.  He reasoned that autumn was drawing in, that the hours of darkness were lengthening, and that anyway, albeit the weather had not turned chilly as yet, a fire would be companionable.  He ordered a fire therefore (more work for Mrs Bowldler).  But somehow, after a brief defeat, his ennui returned.  Then of a sudden, one night at bed-time, he bethought him of the musical box, and that John Peter Nanjulian needed hurrying-up.

Accordingly the next morning, as the church clock struck ten, found him climbing the narrow ascent to On the Wall:  where, at the garden gate, he encountered Mr Philp in the act of leaving the house with a bulging carpet-bag.

“Eh?  Good mornin’, Mr Philp.”

“Good mornin’ to you, Cap’n Hocken.”  Mr Philp was hurrying by, but his besetting temptation held him to a halt.  “How’s Cap’n Hunken in these days?” he inquired.

“Nicely, thank you,” answered Cai, using the formula of Troy.

“I ha’n’t see you two together o’ late.”

“No?” Cai, casting about to change the subject, let fall a casual remark on the weather, and asked, “What’s that you’re carryin’, if one may make so bold?”

“It’s—­it’s a little commission for John Peter,” stammered Mr Philp.  “Nothin’ to mention.”

He beat a hasty retreat down the hill.

“’Tis curious now,” said Cai to John Peter ten minutes later, “how your inquisitive man hates a question, just as your joker can’t never face a joke that goes against him.  I met Philp, just outside, with a carpet bag:  and I no sooner asked what he was carryin’ than he bolted like a hare.”

“There’s no secret about it, either,” said John Peter.  “He tells me that, for occupation, he has opened an agency for the Plymouth Dye and Cleanin’ Works.”

“And you’ve given him some clothes to be cleaned?  Well, I don’t see why he need be ashamed o’ that.”