“Well, Dame, shall I send to—for a warm cloak for you?” said Madeline.
“Ho! thankye, young leddy—thankye kindly, and I’ll wear it at your widding, for they says you be going to git married to the larned man yander. Wish ye well, ma’am, wish ye well.”
And the old hag grinned as she uttered this benediction, that sounded on her lips like the Lord’s Prayer on a witch’s; which converts the devotion to a crime, and the prayer to a curse.
“Ye’re very winsome, young lady,” she continued, eyeing Madeline’s tall and rounded figure from head to foot. “Yes, very—but I was as bonny as you once, and if you lives—mind that—fair and happy as you stand now, you’ll be as withered, and foul-faced, and wretched as me—ha! ha! I loves to look on young folk, and think o’ that. But mayhap ye won’t live to be old—more’s the pity, for ye might be a widow and childless, and a lone ‘oman, as I be; if you were to see sixty: an’ wouldn’t that be nice?—ha! ha!—much pleasure ye’d have in the fine weather then, and in people’s fine speeches, eh?”
“Come, Dame,” said Lester, with a cloud on his benign brow, “this talk is ungrateful to me, and disrespectful to Miss Lester; it is not the way to—” “Hout!” interrupted the old woman; “I begs pardon, Sir, if I offended—I begs pardon, young lady, ‘tis my way, poor old soul that I be. And you meant me kindly, and I would not be uncivil, now you are a-going to give me a bonny cloak,—and what colour shall it be?”
“Why, what colour would you like best, Dame—red?”
“Red!—no!—like a gypsy-quean, indeed! Besides, they all has red cloaks in the village, yonder. No; a handsome dark grey—or a gay, cheersome black, an’ then I’ll dance in mourning at your wedding, young lady; and that’s what ye’ll like. But what ha’ye done with the merry bridegroom, Ma’am? Gone away, I hear. Ah, ye’ll have a happy life on it, with a gentleman like him. I never seed him laugh once. Why does not ye hire me as your sarvant—would not I be a favourite thin! I’d stand on the thrishold, and give ye good morrow every day. Oh! it does me a deal of good to say a blessing to them as be younger and gayer than me. Madge Darkman’s blessing!—Och! what a thing to wish for!”
“Well, good day, mother,” said Lester, moving on.
“Stay a bit, stay a bit, Sir;—has ye any commands, Miss, yonder, at Master Aram’s? His old ‘oman’s a gossip of mine—we were young togither—and the lads did not know which to like the best. So we often meets, and talks of the old times. I be going up there now.—Och! I hope I shall be asked to the widding. And what a nice month to wid in; Novimber—Novimber, that’s the merry month for me! But ‘tis cold—bitter cold, too. Well, good day—good day. Ay,” continued the hag, as Lester and the sisters moved on, “ye all goes and throws niver a look behind. Ye despises the poor in your hearts. But the poor will have their day. Och! an’ I wish ye were dead—dead—dead, an’ I dancing in my bonny black cloak about your graves;—for an’t all mine dead—cold—cold—rotting, and one kind and rich man might ha’ saved them all.”
Thus mumbling, the wretched creature looked after the father and his daughters, as they wound onward, till her dim eyes caught them no longer; and then, drawing her rags round her, she rose, and struck into the opposite path that led to Aram’s house.