"I don't see anything immodest in it," said Mrs Bosenna looking up.
She was on her knees and had just finished pressing the earth about the
roots of a small rose-bush. "The house is mine, and naturally I am
curious to know something about my tenant."

Dinah, her middle-aged maid, who had been holding the bush upright and
steady, answered this challenge with a short sniff. "He don't seem over
curious, for his part, about _you_." She, too, glanced upward and
toward the house, the upper storey alone of which, from where they
stood, was visible above the spikes of a green palisade. A roadway
divided the house from the garden, which descended to the harbour-cliff
in a series of tiny terraces. "They've been pokin' around indoors this
hour and more."

"You don't suppose he caught sight of us?"

"Maybe not; but Tabb's child did. That girl 've a-got eyes like
niddles. If he don't come down to pay his respects, you may bet 'tis
because he don't want to." Dinah, being vexed, spoke viciously.
Her speech implied that her mistress's conduct had been not only
indelicate but clumsy.

"You are a horrid woman," Mrs Bosenna accused her; "and I can't think
what put such nasty-minded thoughts into your head."

"No more can I, unless you suggested 'em," Dinah retorted.

"You were willing enough to come, when--when--"

"When you proposed it," Dinah relentlessly concluded the sentence.