"Are you coming, or are you not?"
"Presently," replied Ufim. "One thing at a time."
For supper I was given a hunch of bread and a bowl of milk; whereupon the dog rose, laid its aged, slobbering muzzle upon my knee, and gazed into my face with its dim eyes as though it were saying, "May I too have a bite?"
Next, like an eventide breeze among withered herbage, there floated across the forecourt the hoarse voice of the crook-backed old woman.
"Let us pray," she said. "Oh God, take away from us all sorrow, and receive therefore requitement in twofold measure!"
As she recited the prayer with a mien as dark as fate, the supplicant rolled her long neck from side to side, and nodded her ophidian-shaped head in accordance with a sort of regular, lethargic rhythm. Next I heard sink to earth, at my feet, some senile words uttered in a sort of singsong.
"Some folk need work just as much as they wish, and others need do no work at all. Yet OUR folk have to work beyond their strength, and to work without any recompense for the toil which they undergo."
Upon this the smaller of the old crones whispered:
"But the Mother of God will recompense them. She recompenses everyone."
Then a dead silence fell—a weighty silence, a silence seemingly fraught with matters of import, and inspiring in one an assurance that presently there would be brought forth impressive reflections—there would reach the ear words of mark.