There was a volley of curses, oaths mingled with sounds that reminded
me of nothing so much as a spitting cat, and a familiar voice screamed
in almost inarticulate rage:
"Let me go, damn ye, or I'll knife ye!"
"Good heavens!" I cried. "Let her go, Barkhouse. It's Mother Borton."
Mother Borton freed herself with a vicious shake, and called down the
wrath of Heaven and hell on the stalwart guard.
"You're the black-hearted spawn of the sewer rats, to take a
respectable woman like a bag of meal," cried Mother Borton indignantly,
with a fresh string of oaths. "It's fire and brimstone you'll be
tasting yet, and you'd 'a' been there before now, you miserable gutter-
picker, if it wasn't for me. And this is the thanks I git from ye!"
"I'll apologize for his display of gallantry," said I banteringly.
"I've always told him that he was too fond of the ladies."
I was mistaken in judging that this tone would be the most effective to
restore her to good humor. Mother Borton turned on me furiously.
"Oh, it's you that would set him on a poor woman as comes to do you a
service. I was as wide-awake as any of ye. I never closed my eyes a
wink, and you has to come a-sneakin' up and settin' your dogs on me."
Mother Borton again drew on an apparently inexhaustible vocabulary of
oaths. "Oh, you're as bad as him," she shouted, "and I reckon you'd be
worse if you knowed how." And she spat out more curses, and shook her
fist in impotent but verbose rage.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156