They were strolling through Gartley village by this time, and the cottagers came to their doors and front gates to look at the handsome young couple.  Everyone knew of the engagement, and approved of the same, although some hinted that Lucy Kendal would have been wiser to marry the soldier-baronet.  Amongst these was Widow Anne, who really was Mrs. Bolton, the mother of Sidney, a dismal female invariably arrayed in rusty, stuffy, aggressive mourning, although her husband had been dead for over twenty years.  Because of this same mourning, and because she was always talking of the dead, she was called “Widow Anne,” and looked on the appellation as a compliment to her fidelity.  At the present moment she stood at the gate of her tiny garden, mopping her red eyes with a dingy handkerchief.

“Ah, young love, young love, my lady,” she groaned, when the couple passed, for she always gave Lucy a title as though she really and truly had become the wife of Sir Frank, “but who knows how long it may last?”

“As long as we do,” retorted Lucy, annoyed by this prophetic speech.

Widow Anne groaned with relish.  “So me and Aaron, as is dead and gone, thought, my lady.  But in six months he was knocking the head off me.”

“The man who would lay his hand on a woman save in the way of—­”

“Oh, Archie, what nonsense, you talk!” cried Miss Kendal pettishly.

“Ah!” sighed the woman of experience, “I called it nonsense too, my lady, afore Aaron, who now lies with the worms, laid me out with a flat-iron.  Men’s fit for jails only, as I allays says.”

“A nice opinion you have of our sex,” remarked Archie dryly.

“I have, sir.  I could tell you things as would make your head waggle with horror on there shoulders of yours.”

“What about your son Sidney?  Is he also wicked?”

“He would be if he had the strength, which he hasn’t,” exclaimed the widow with uncomplimentary fervor.  “He’s Aaron’s son, and Aaron hadn’t much to learn from them as is where he’s gone too,” and she looked downward significantly.

“Sidney is a decent young fellow,” said Lucy sharply.  “How dare you miscall your own flesh and blood, Widow Anne?  My father thinks a great deal of Sidney, else he would not have sent him to Malta.  Do try and be cheerful, there’s a good soul.  Sidney will tell you plenty to make you laugh, when he comes home.”

“If he ever does come home,” sighed the old woman.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, it’s all very well asking questions as can’t be answered nohow, my lady, but I be all of a mubble-fubble, that I be.”

“What is a mubble-fubble?” asked Hope, staring.

“It’s a queer-like feeling of death and sorrow and tears of blood and not lifting your head for groans,” said Widow Anne incoherently, “and there’s meanings in mubble-fumbles, as we’re told in Scripture.  Not but what the Perfesser’s been a kind gentleman to Sid in taking him from going round with the laundry cart, and eddicating him to watch camphorated corpses:  not as what I’d like to keep an eye on them things myself.  But there’s no more watching for my boy Sid, as I dreamed.”