VII
"You're just an unmitigated little humbug, Johnnie," said Graeme, as he leaned over the wall smoking, to the small boy whose acquaintance he had made the previous day, and who had promptly foretold a storm which had not come.
"Unmitigumbug! Guyablle! Qu'es' ce que c'es' que ça?" echoed the small boy, with very wide eyes.
"You, my son. Your black magic's all humbug. It lacks the essential attribute of fulfilment. It doesn't work. Black magic that doesn't work is humbug."
"Black-mack-chick! My Good! You do talk!"
"What about that storm?"
"Ah ouaie! Well, you wait. It come."
"So will Christmas, and the summer after next, if we wait long enough. On the same terms I foretell thunders and lightnings, rain, hail, snow, and fiery vapours, followed by lunar rainbows and waterspouts."
"Go'zamin!" said Johnnie, with a touch of reluctant admiration at such an outflow of eloquence; and then, by way of set-off, "I sec six black crows, 's mawn'n."
"Ah—really? And what do you gather from such a procession as that now?"
"Some un's gwain' to die," in a tone of vast satisfaction.
"Of course, of course—if we wait long enough. It's perhaps you. You'll die yourself sometime, you know."
"Noh, I wun't. No 'n'll ivver see me die. I'll just turn into sun'th'n—a gull maybe," as one floated by on moveless wing, the very poetry of motion; and the fathomless black eyes followed it with pathetic longing.
"Cormorant more likely, I should say."
"Noh, I wun't. I don' like corm'rants. They stink. Mebbe I'll be a hawk,"—as his eye fell on one, like a brown leaf nailed against the blue sky. "Did ee hear White Horse last night?"
"I did hear a horse in the night, Johnnie, but I couldn't swear that he was a white one."
"Didn' git up an' look out?" disappointedly.
"No, I didn't. Why should I get up to look out at a horse? I can see horses any day without getting out of bed in the middle of the night."
"'Twus the White Horse of the Coupée,"—in a weird whisper.—"I heerd him start in Little Sark, and come across Coupée, an' up by Colinette, an' past this house. An' if you'd ha' looked out an' seen him, you'd ha' died."
"Good old White Horse! I'm glad I stopped in bed. Did you see him yourself now?"
"I've rid him! Yes!—an' told him where to go," with a ghoulish nod.
"Quite friendly with ghosts and things, eh?"
"I don' mind 'em. I seen the ole lady up at the big house. Yes, an' talked to her too."
"Clever boy! Put the evil eye on her?"
"Noh, ee cann't."
"Can't? Why, I thought you were a past master in all little matters of that kind."
"Ee cann't put evil eye on a ghost," with infinite scorn.
"Oh, she's a ghost, is she? And what did you talk about?"
"You coul'n't understan'," grunted Johnnie, to whom his meeting with the White Lady was a treasured memory if a somewhat tender subject.