第45章 CHAPTER XIII(4)
"How dare you say what you have said?" she cried, her voice shrill and hard with anger. "Mr. Hope has been saying the same thing. Are you both mad? I never set eyes on the horrid thing in my life. And only to-night you told me that you loved - ""Yes, yes, I said many foolish things, I don't doubt, madam. But that is not the question. My mummy ! my mummy!" he rapped the wood furiously - "how does my mummy come to be here?""I don't know," said Mrs. Jasher, still furious, "and I don't care.""Don't care: don't care, when I look forward to your helping me in my lifework! As my wife - ""I shall never be your wife," cried the widow, stamping again.
"I wouldn't be your wife for a thousand or a million pounds.
Marry your mummy, you horrid, red-faced, crabbed little - ""Hush! hush!" whispered Lucy, taking the angry woman round the waist, "you must make allowances for my father. He is so excited over his good fortune that he - ""I shall not make allowance," interrupted Mrs. Jasher angrily.
"He practically accuses me of stealing the mummy. If I did that, I must have murdered poor Sidney Bolton.""No, no," cried the Professor, wiping his red face. "I never hinted at such a thing. But the mummy is in your garden.""What of that? I don't know how it came there. Mr. Hope, surely you do not support Professor Braddock in his preposterous accusation?""I bring no accusation," stuttered the Professor.
"Neither do I, Mrs. Jasher. You are excited now. Go in and sleep, and to-morrow you will talk reasonably." This brilliant speech was from Hope, and wrought Mrs. Jasher into a royal rage.
"Well," she gasped, "he asks me to be calm, as it I wasn't the very calmest person here. I declare: oh, I shall be ill! Lucy,"she seized the girl's hand and dragged her towards the cottage, "come in and give me red lavender. I shall be in bed for days and days and days. Oh, what brutes men can be! But listen, you two horrors," she indicated Braddock and Hope, as she pushed open the door, "If you dare to say a word against me, I'll have an action for libel against you. Oh, dear me, how very ill I feel!
Lucy, darling, help me, oh, help me, and - and - oh - oh - oh!"She flopped down on the threshold of her home with a cry.
"Archie! Archie! She's fainted."
Hope rushed forward, and raised the stout little woman in his arms. Jane, attracted by the clamor, appeared on the scene, and between the three of them they managed to get Mrs. Jasher placed on the sofa of the pink drawing-room. She certainly was in a dead faint, so Hope left her to the administrations of Lucy and the servant, and walked out again into the garden, closing the cottage door after him.
He found the heartless Professor quite oblivious to Mrs. Jasher's sufferings, so taken up was he with the newly found mummy.
Cockatoo had been sent for a hand-cart, and while he was absent Braddock expatiated on the perfections of this relic of Peruvian civilization.
"Will you sell it to Don Pedro?" asked Hope.
"After I have done with it, not before," snapped Braddock, hovering round his treasure. "I shall want a percentage on my bargain also."Archie thought privately that if Braddock unswathed the mummy, he would find the emeralds and would probably stick to them, so that his expedition to Egypt might be financed. It that case Don Pedro would no longer wish to buy the corpse of his ancestor.
But while he debated as to the advisability of telling the Professor of the existence of the emeralds, Cockatoo returned with the hand-cart.
"You have lost Mrs. Jasher," said Hope, while he, assisted the Professor to hoist the mummy on to the cart.
"Never mind! never mind!" Braddock patted the coffin. "I have found something much more to my mind: something ever so much better. Ha! ha!"