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“Oh, certainly,” he answered, and went home and thought it over. Women were a puzzle; but he had a dim notion that if he could lay hand on the reason why Mistress Prudence preferred ordinary carriers to prize tumblers, he would hold the key to some of the secrets of the sex. He thought it over for three days, during which he smoked more tobacco than was good for him. At about four o’clock in the afternoon of the third day, a smile enlarged his face. He set down his pipe, smacked his thigh, stood up, sat down again, and began to laugh. He laughed slowly and deliberately–not loudly–for the greater part of that evening, and woke up twice in the night and shook the bedclothes into long waves with his mirth.

Next morning he took two carriers from the cote, shut them in a hamper, and rowed down to Ponteglos with his gift. But Mrs. Waddilove was not at home. She had started early by van for Tregarrick (said the waitress at the “Pandora’s Box”) on business connected with her husband’s will. “No hurry at all,” said Master Simon. He slipped a handful of Indian corn under the lid, and left the hamper “with his respects.”

Then he rowed home, and spent the next two days after his wont; the only observable difference being the position of his garden chair. It stood as a rule under the shadow of the broad eaves, but now Master Simon ordered the tap-boy to carry it out and set it by a rustic table close to the river’s brink, whence, as he smoked, he could keep comfortable watch upon the pigeon-cote.

“You’ll catch a sunstroke,” said Ann the cook. “I hope you’re not beginning to forget how to take care of yourself.”

“Well, I hope so too,” Master Simon answered; but he did not budge.

On the morning of the third day, however, he saw that which made him step indoors and mount to the attic under the cote. Having opened with much caution a trap-door in the roof, he slipped an arm out and captured a carrier pigeon.

The bird carried a note folded small and bound under its wing with a thread of silk. Master Simon opened the note and read:

If you loves me as I loves you,
No knife can cut our loves in two.

He had prepared himself for a hearty chuckle; but he broke out with a profuse perspiration instead. “Oh, this is hustling a man!” he ingeminated, staring round the empty attic like a rabbit seeking a convenient hole. “Not three weeks buried!” he added, with another groan, and began to loosen his neck-cloth.

While thus engaged, he heard a flutter above the trap-door, and a second pigeon alighted, with a second note, also bound with a silken thread.

“Lor-a-mercy!” gasped Master Simon.

But the second note was written in a different hand, and ran as follows:

“I could die of shame. It was all that hussy of a girl. She did it for a joke. I’ll joke her. But what will you be thinking?–P. W.”

Master Simon rowed down to Ponteglos that very afternoon, and the two carriers went back with him. Happiness seemed to have shaken its wings and quite departed from “Pandora’s Box”; but a twinkle of something not entirely unlike hope lurked in the corners of the waitress’s eyes–albeit their lids were red and swollen–as she ushered Master Simon into the best parlour.

“What can you be thinking of me?” began the widow. Her eyes were red and swollen, too.

“I’ve brought back the pigeons.”

“I can never bear the sight of them again!”

“You might begin different, you know,” suggested Master Simon, affably. “Some little message about the weather, for instance. Have you given that girl warning to leave?”

“You see, I’m so lonely here . . .”