The Green Mummy | Page 7

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," exclaimed the
widow with uncomplimentary fervor. "He's Aaron's son, and Aaron
hadn't much to learn from them as is where he's gone too," and she
looked downward significantly.
"Sidney is a decent young fellow," said Lucy sharply. "How dare you

miscall your own flesh and blood, Widow Anne? My father thinks a
great deal of Sidney, else he would not have sent him to Malta. Do try
and be cheerful, there's a good soul. Sidney will tell you plenty to make
you laugh, when he comes home."
"If he ever does come home," sighed the old woman.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, it's all very well asking questions as can't be answered nohow, my
lady, but I be all of a mubble-fubble, that I be."
"What is a mubble-fubble?" asked Hope, staring.
"It's a queer-like feeling of death and sorrow and tears of blood and not
lifting your head for groans," said Widow Anne incoherently, "and
there's meanings in mubble-fumbles, as we're told in Scripture. Not but
what the Perfesser's been a kind gentleman to Sid in taking him from
going round with the laundry cart, and eddicating him to watch
camphorated corpses: not as what I'd like to keep an eye on them things
myself. But there's no more watching for my boy Sid, as I dreamed."
"What did you dream?" asked Lucy curiously.
Widow Anne threw up two gnarled hands, wrinkled with age and
laundry work, screwing up her face meanwhile.
"I dreamed of battle and murder and sudden death, my lady, with Sid in
his cold grave playing on a harp, angel-like. Yes!" she folded her rusty
shawl tightly round her spare form and nodded, "there was Sid, looking
beautiful in his coffin, and cut into a hash, as you might say, with - "
"Ugh! ugh!" shuddered Lucy, and Archie strove to draw her away.
"With murder written all over his poor face," pursued the widow. "And
I woke up screeching with cramp in my legs and pains in my lungs, and
beatings in my heart, and stiffness in my - "
"Oh, hang it, shut up!" shouted Archie, seeing that Lucy was growing

pale at this ghoulish recital, "don't be fool, woman. Professor Braddock
says that Bolton'll be back in three days with the mummy he has been
sent to fetch from Malta. You have been having nightmare! Don't you
see how you are frightening Miss Kendal?"
"'The Witch' of Endor, sir - "
"Deuce take the Witch of Endor and you also. There's a shilling. Go
and drink yourself into a more cheery frame of mind."
Widow Anne bit the shilling with one of her two remaining teeth, and
dropped a curtsey.
"You're a good, kind gentleman," she smirked, cheered at the idea of
unlimited gin. "And when my boy Sid do come home a corpse, I hope
you'll come to the funeral, sir."
"What a raven!" said Lucy, as Widow Anne toddled away in the
direction of the one public-house in Gartley village.
"I don't wonder that the late Mr. Bolton laid her out with a flat-iron. To
slay such a woman would be meritorious."
"I wonder how she came to be the mother of Sidney," said Miss Kendal
reflectively, as they resumed their walk, "he's such a clever, smart, and
handsome young man."
"I think Bolton owes everything to the Professor's teaching and
example, Lucy," replied her lover. "He was an uncouth lad, I
understand, when your step-father took him