Читать книгу The Doomington Wanderer - Louis Golding - Страница 23

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Tom Molyneux did not meet the ghost again; but he met a creature he was almost as loth to meet—the maiden from Winfold, Mary Jane Spender, the Lilith of his black frailty. She had come a good thirty miles to tell him what she thought of him.

She posted herself just outside the caravan at the time when he was due to go over to the booth to start the evening’s entertainment.

But Mary Jane Spender provided the first turn that evening. Her language was not at all maidenly. “You lump of black blubber!” she said. “You lily-livered heathen! You yellow toad! Scared of a hollowed-out turnip, are you? With a candle behind its eyes, are you? Scared of a bed-sheet round a broomstick, are you? Pah! I spit at you!”

She spat at him and returned to the attack. Some fifteen minutes later, having said what she had come to say, she turned and went back to Winfold, a contented and liberated woman.

Tom Molyneux was more than usually silent that night, when the show was over, and they had eaten and repaired for the night into the caravan.

Then at last he spoke.

“Bill,” he said heavily, “yo’ heard what dat ... what dat female said?”

“Not all of it!” answered Bill Richmond cautiously.

“Yo’ heard what she said about de ghost of Joe Mason being ... yo’ heard what she said?”

“I did.”

“Is it true, Bill?”

“It may be. Perhaps it is. Many folks say there’s no such things as ghosts.”

“Whose ah-deah was it, Bill?”

Bill was silent a moment or two. “Whose idea was it?” he ruminated. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said lightly, “if it wasn’t those two brothers of hers did it.”

“Ah see!” said Tom. “All right, Bill! Good night!”

“Good night, Tom!”