"Holy Madonna, most sacred mother, take back your blessed heart. Take it back, for the sake of the God that loved you, take it back, and trample on the wicked stomach of her who dared to steal it. You have come through the fires of hell to fetch it, mother of the beloved one, lo I hold it out to you."
I gladly received my poor gordit, and left the old lady, as there was now no danger, to recover her wits at leisure; for I had not a moment to spare.
As I entered Mrs. Shelfer's door, the church clock at the top of the Square was striking twelve. By the two o'clock train I must go, or I might as well have stopped in my dungeon. Though the smoke had purified me a little, I still felt conscious of a nasty clinging smell; but it would have surprised me, if there had been time, when the little woman cried,
"Lor bless my soul, Miss Vaughan, where ever have you been? Why, Mr. Chumps the butcher--"
"The bath in one moment, and all the water in the house. And as I throw my things out, burn them in the garden."
In twenty minutes I was reclad from head to foot, and as sweet as any girl in Gloucestershire; my eyes were bright with energy, and my dripping hair in billows, like a rapid under the pine-trees. I had no time to tell Mrs. Shelfer, who was off her legs with excitement, one word of what had happened, or what I was going to do; but flung on myself another hat and cloak, then her old bonnet and little green shawl on her, dragged her out of the house, and locked the door behind us; for Mrs. Fletcher, after waiting and wondering long about me, was gone to consult Ann Maples. If Mrs. Shelfer's best bonnet was twenty-two years old, her second-best must have been forty-four; at any rate it appeared coeval with herself.
Patty trotted along at my side, wondering what would come next. Her thin little lips were working, and her face was like a kaleidoscope of expressions; but whenever I glanced toward her, she cast her eyes up, with a scared weird look, as if she was watching a ghost through a skylight, and trudged still faster, and muttered, "Yes, yes, Miss Vaughan. Quite right, my good friend; not a moment to lose."
"And pray, Mrs. Shelfer, where do you suppose we are going?"
"Oh, I knows well enough "--with her eyes like corks drawn by distance--"I knowed it all the time. Yes, yes. Let me alone for that. Patty Shelfer wasn't born yesterday. Why only Tuesday was a week--"
"If you guess right, I will tell you."