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 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.”
“I don’t know so much about that, Archie. Mrs. Jasher is attractive.”
Hope laughed.
“In a mutton-dressed-as-lamb way, no doubt.”
“And she has money. My father is poor and so—”
“You make up a match at once, as every woman will do.
Well, let us get back to the Pyramids, and see how the flirtation is progressing.”
Lucy walked on for a few steps in silence.
“Do you believe in Mrs. Bolton’s dream, Archie?”
“No!
I believe she eats heavy suppers.
Bolton will return quite safe; he is a clever fellow, not easily taken advantage of.
Don’t bother any more about Widow Anne and her dismal prophecies.”
“I’ll try not to,” replied Lucy dutifully. “All the same, I wish she had not told me her dream,” and she shivered.
CHAPTER II. PROFESSOR BRADDOCK
There was only one really palatial mansion in Gartley, and that was the ancient Georgian house known as the Pyramids.
Lucy’s step-father had given the place this eccentric name on taking up his abode there some ten years previously. Before that time the dwelling had been occupied by the Lord of the Manor and his family.
But now the old squire was dead, and his impecunious children were scattered to the four quarters of the globe in search of money with which to rebuild their ruined fortunes.
As the village was somewhat isolated and rather unhealthily situated in a marshy country, the huge, roomy old Grange had not been easy to let, and had proved quite impossible to sell.
Under these disastrous circumstances, Professor Braddock—who described himself humorously as a scientific pauper—had obtained the tenancy at a ridiculously low rental, much to his satisfaction.
Many people would have paid money to avoid exile in these damp waste lands, which, as it were, fringed civilization, but their loneliness and desolation suited the Professor exactly.
He required ample room for his Egyptian collection, with plenty of time to decipher hieroglyphics and study perished dynasties of the Nile Valley.