“Yes,” she cried, “I be here; and I keep coming, and watching, and waiting for the day when the curse shall work. It is planted and growing, for I water it with my widow’s tears, and, in due time, it will blossom and shower down seed upon you and your accursed house. Ha! ha! ha! You think to escape it,” she cried, with her voice increasing in shrillness, to attract the attention of the workpeople; “but mark my words—mark it all of you at the windows there—the great curse will overshadow him and his, and he will feel it sore, though he hopes to escape it all.”
“Nay, good mother,” said the founder mildly, and speaking in a sad, pitying voice, to the surprise of Sir Mark, who expected to see him burst into a passion. “Nay, nay, I think to ’scape no share of my troubles, such as the good Lord shall put upon me and mine.”
“The good Lord!” cried Mother Goodhugh, shrilly; “the good devil you mean, who watches over thee and thy Satanic plots and plans.”
“Well, there, there, mother,” said the founder, “go your way. I have company here to-day. You can come another time when I am alone, and curse me till you are hoarse,” he added, with a twinkle of the eye.
“Nay, but I’ll curse thee now,” said the old woman excitedly, as her eyes glistened, her wrinkled cheeks flushed, and her grey hair seemed to stand right away from her temples. “Let him hear me curse thee for an ungodly man with all his trade, a maker of devilish engines, and hellish thunder and lightning in barrels, in which he shall some day pass away in a storm of fire and smoke and brimstone fumes.”
“Is she mad?” whispered Sir Mark, plucking the founder by the sleeve.
“No,” said the founder sadly. “Poor soul; but she has had troubles enough to make her.”
“How dare you pity me, wretch, demon, hellhound?” cried the old woman. “Murderer that you are, you shall yet suffer for your crimes.”
“Let us walk on,” whispered Sir Mark, as a group of smoke-begrimed workmen came out and gathered at the windows to listen.
“Nay, I’ll let her say her say,” replied the founder, grimly. “If I go, she will follow me, and cast cinders at me, like a she Shimei, and I’ve got a big founding to make, my lad, which might come out badly if she stood in the window cursing me all in heaps.”