“’Tis as ’twould be!” she muttered at last. “Cards be wonderful crafty, though toads and efties, to my thinkin’, be better, and a viper’s innards be God’s very truth.”
Making, to Luke’s great disappointment, no further allusion to the result of her investigations, the old woman picked up the cards and went through the whole process again, in honour of Mr. Quincunx.
This time, after bending for several minutes over the solitary’s choice, she became more voluble.
“Thy heart’s wish be thine, dearie,” she said. “But there be thwartings and blastings. Three tears—three kisses—and a terrible journey. Us shan’t have ’ee long wi’ we, in these ’ere parts. Thee be marked and signed, master, by fallin’ stars and flyin’ birds. There’s good sound wood gone to ship’s keel wot’ll carry thee fast and far. Blastings and thwartings! But thy heart’s wish be thine, dearie.”
The humourous nostrils of Mr. Quincunx and the expressive curves of his bearded chin had twitched and quivered as this sorcery began, but the old woman’s reference to a “terrible journey” clouded his countenance with blank dismay.
Luke pressed the sybil to be equally communicative with regard to his own fate, but the old woman gathered up her cards, twisted the same faded stalks round the packet, and returned it to the folds of her shawl. Then she struggled up upon her feet.
“Don’t leave us yet, Bessie,” said Luke. “I’ll bring you out something to eat presently.”
Witch-Bessie’s only reply to this hospitable invitation was confounding in its irrelevance. She picked up her draggled skirt with her two hands, displaying her unlaced boots and rumpled stockings, and then, throwing back her wizened head, with its rusty weather-bleached bonnet, and emitting a pallid laugh from her toothless gums, she proceeded to tread a sort of jerky measure, moving her old feet to the tune of a shrill ditty.
“Now we dance looby, looby, looby,
Now we dance looby, looby, light;