"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 into the house six years ago. Now he is quite
presentable. I shouldn't wonder if he married Mrs. Jasher."
"H'm! I rather think Mrs. Jasher admires the Professor."
"Oh, he'll never marry her. If she were a mummy there might be a chance,
of course, but as a human being the Professor will never look at her."