The Green Mummy | Page 6

bought it?"
"Yes. He got it for nine hundred pounds, the Professor told me, and is bringing it back in The Diver - that's the same tramp steamer in which he went to Malta. So that's the whole story, and you can see there is no question of you being bought. The thousand pounds went to get your father's consent."
"He is not my father," snapped Lucy, finding nothing else to say.
"You call him so."
"That is only from habit. I can't call him Mr. Braddock, or Professor Braddock, when I live with him, so `father' is the sole mode of address left to me. And after all," she added, taking her lover's arm, "I like the Professor; he is very kind and good, although extremely absent-minded. And I am glad he has consented, for he worried me a lot to marry Sir Frank Random. I am glad you bought me."
"But I didn't," cried the exasperated lover.
"I think you did, and you shouldn't have diminished your income by buying what you could have had for nothing."
Archie shrugged his shoulders. It was vain to combat her fixed idea.
"I have still three hundred a year left. And you were worth buying."
"You have no right to talk of me as though I had been bought."
The young man gasped. "But you said - "
"Oh, what does it matter what I said. I am going to marry you on three hundred a year, so there it is. I suppose when Bolton returns, my father will be glad to see the back of me, and then will go to Egypt with Sidney to explore this secret tomb he is always talking about."
"That expedition will require more than a thousand pounds," said Archie dryly. "The Professor explained the obstacles to me. However, his doings have nothing to do with us, darling. Let Professor Braddock fumble amongst the dead if he likes. We live!"
"Apart," sighed Lucy.
"Only for the next six months; then we can get our, cottage and live on love, my dearest."
"Plus three hundred a year," said the girl sensibly then she added, "Oh, poor Frank Random!"
"Lucy," cried her lover indignantly.
"Well, I was only pitying him. He's a nice man, and you can't expect him to be pleased at our marriage."
"Perhaps," said Hope in an icy tone, "you would like him to be the bridegroom. If so, there is still time."
"Silly boy! She shook his arm. "As I lave been bought, you know that I can't run away from my purchaser."
"You denied being bought just now. It seems to me, Lucy, that I am to marry a weather-cock."
"That is only an impolite name for a woman, dear. You have no sense of humor, Frank, or you would call me an April lady."
"Because you change every five minutes. H'm! It's puzzling."
"Is it? Perhaps you would like me to resemble Widow Anne, who is always funereal. Here she is, looking like Niobe."
They were strolling through Gartley village by this time, and the cottagers came to their doors and front gates to look at the handsome young couple. Everyone knew of the engagement, and approved of the same, although some hinted that Lucy Kendal would have been wiser to marry the soldier-baronet. Amongst these was Widow Anne, who really was Mrs. Bolton, the mother of Sidney, a dismal female invariably arrayed in rusty, stuffy, aggressive mourning, although her husband had been dead for over twenty years. Because of this same mourning, and because she was always talking of the dead, she vas called "Widow Anne," and looked on the appellation as a compliment to her fidelity. At the present moment she stood at the gate of her tiny garden, mopping her red eyes with a dingy handkerchief.
'Ah, young love, young love, my lady," she groaned, when the couple passed, for she always gave Lucy a title as though she really and truly had become the wife of Sir Frank, "but who knows how long it may last?"
"As long as we do," retorted Lucy, annoyed by this prophetic speech.
Widow Anne groaned with relish. "So me and Aaron, as is dead and gone, thought, my lady. But in six months he was knocking the head off me."
"The man who would lay his hand on a woman save in the way of - "
"Oh, Archie, what nonsense, you talk!" cried Miss Kendal pettishly.
"Ah!" sighed the woman of experience, "I called it nonsense too, my lady, afore Aaron, who now lies with the worms, laid me out with a flat-iron. Men's fit for jails only, as I allays says."
"A nice opinion you have of our sex," remarked Archie dryly.
"I have, sir. I could tell you things as would make your head waggle with horror on there shoulders of yours."
"What about your son Sidney? Is he also wicked?"
"He would be if he had the strength, which he hasn't,"