“You poor loon!” said Bersa.
“O man! man!” moaned Grue.
“You’re the ruin of us all!” cried Mavie.
Three fine women were Grue and Mavie and Bersa, in spite of the clamour of the outlandish Piffingcap names, and their father had respect for them and admired their handsomeness. But they had for their father, all three of them, the principal filial emotion of compassion, and they showed that his action had been a foolish action, that there were other towns in the world besides Bagwood, and that thousands and millions of men would pay a good price to be quit of a beard, and be shaved from a pot that would complete the destruction of all the unwanted hairiness of the world. And they were very angry with him.
“Let us go and see to it ... what is to be done now ... bring us to the place, father!”
He took them down to the river, and when they peered over the side of the bridge they could see the pot lying half sunk in some white sand in more than a fathom of water.
“Let us instruct the waterman,” they said, “he will secure it for us.”
In the afternoon Grue met the waterman, who was a sly young fellow, and she instructed him, but at tea-time word was brought to Piffingcap that the young waterman was fallen into the river and drowned. Then there was grief in his mind, for he remembered the calamity which Grafton had foretold, and he was for giving up all notions of re-taking the cup; but his daughter Bersa went in a few days to a man was an angler and instructed him; and he took a crooked pole and leaned over the bridge to probe for the cup. In the afternoon word was brought to Piffingcap that the parapet had given way, and the young angler in falling through had dashed out his brains on the abutment of the bridge. And the young gaffer whom Mavie instructed was took of a sunstroke and died on the bank.
The barber was in great grief at these calamities; he had tremors of guilt in his mind, no money in his coffers, and the chins of the Bagwood men were still as smooth as children’s; but it came to him one day that he need not fear any more calamities, and that a thing which had so much tricks in it should perhaps be cured by trickery.
“I will go,” he said, “to the Widow Buckland and ask her to assist me.”