“Yes—to meet you here this forenoon on urgent business. If it is anything secret you have to tell me, I hope you have not got your wonderful old witch in the back cave, for she seems to have discovered as thorough a cure for deafness as I found for leprosy at the Hot Swamp.”
“Wonderful old witch!” repeated Beniah, with a dazed look, and a tone of exasperation that the prince could not account for. “Do you, then, not know about that old woman?”
“Oh! yes, I know only too much about her,” replied Bladud. “She has been staying at the palace for some time, as you know, and rather a lively time the old hag has given us. She went in to see my mother one day and threw her into convulsions, from which, I think, she has hardly recovered yet. Then she went to my father’s room—the chief Gadarn and I were with him at the time—and almost before she had time to speak they went into fits of laughter at her till the tears ran down their cheeks. I must say it seemed to me unnecessarily rude and unkind, for, although the woman is a queer old thing, and has little more of her face visible than her piercing black eyes, I could see nothing to laugh at in her shrivelled-up, bent little body. Besides this, she has kept the domestics in a state of constant agitation, for most of them seem to think her a limb of the evil spirit. But what makes you laugh so?”
“Oh! I see now,” returned the Hebrew, controlling himself by a strong effort. “I understand now why the old woman wished to be present at our interview. Come forth, thou unconscionable hag!” added Beniah, in the voice of a stentor, “and do your worst. I am past emotion of any kind whatever now.”
As he spoke he gazed, with the resigned air of a martyr, at the inner end of his cavern. Bladud also looked in that direction. A moment later and the little old woman with the grey shawl appeared; thrust out the plank bridge; crossed over, and tottered towards them.
“Dearie me! Beniah, there’s no need to yell so loud. You know I’ve got back my hearing. What want ye with me? I’m sure I have no wish to pry into the secrets of this young man or yourself. What d’ye want?”
But Beniah stood speechless, a strange expression on his face, his lips firmly compressed and his arms folded across his breast.
“Have you become as dumb as I was deaf, old man?” asked the woman, petulantly.
Still the Hebrew refused to speak.
“Have patience with him, old woman,” said Bladud, in a soothing tone. “He is sometimes taken with unaccountable fits—”