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The boat shoved off and made for its own anchorage, and Graeme led the girls up the toilsome path to the Coupée. It was after nine when they reached the cottage, and the first thing they saw was Johnnie Vautrin sitting in the hedge opposite, with Marielihou licking her lips alongside. "I just seen seven crows," cried Johnnie gleefully. "Little rascal!
"The nasty beast!" said Miss Penny, and Marielihou glared at her with eyes of scorching green fire. "Marielihou is not good company for anyone but herself," said Graeme. "Now, where would you like to go?" "We were up that way before breakfast," said Miss Penny, nodding due north. "Been to the Coupée yet?" "No, we've been nowhere except just along here.
And at sight of him Marielihou ruffled and swelled to twice her size, and raked up most horrible and blood-curdling oaths from away down in her inside into her black throat, and spat them out at him, as he came up, in a fusillade that sounded like ripraps, and her eyes flamed baleful fires. "Cuss away, y'ould witch!" said old Tom, with a grin through his pipe-stem.
Sometimes she was there, and sometimes she wasn't, and if at such times you asked Johnnie where she was, he would reply mysteriously, "Aw, she's busy." And busy Marielihou was, always and at all times. If Graeme found her in the hedge with Johnnie, she was busy licking her lips with vicious enjoyment as though she had just finished eating something that had screamed as it died.
It was that same night, as they were sauntering home from a starlight ramble, that they came on Johnnie Vautrin crouched in the hedge with Marielihou, and Marielihou had her hind leg bound up in a piece of white rag. "Hello, Johnnie! What's the matter with Marielihou?" asked Graeme. And Marielihou turned her malevolent yellow-green eyes on him and looked curses. "Goderabetin! She've got hurt."
"How's the leg?" and Marielihou with a final volley disappeared among the bushes, and Johnnie crawled after her. "What on earth does he mean?" whispered Meg. "Mr. Hamon has an idea that Marielihou and old Mme. Vautrin have something in common. In fact I believe he goes so far as to say that they are one and the same. Black magic, you know, witchcraft, and all that kind of thing." "How horrid!"
But when old Tom Hamon put it to him direct, he had to confess that he never had seen old Mother Vautrin and Marielihou together, nor both at the same time. "B'en!" said old Tom, as if that ended the matter. "An' I tell you, if I had a silver bullet I'd soon try what that Marrlyou's made of." "And why a silver bullet?" asked Graeme. "'Cause Lead bullets an't no good 'gainst the likes o' Marrlyou.
And I've told you before it's not polite to address a gentleman in a language he's not familiar with, when you're perfectly acquainted with his own. The only word I caught was 'Guyablle! and that's not a word for young people like you and me, though it may suit Marielihou. I'm very much afraid I'll have to speak to the schoolmaster about you, after all, and to the Vicar too, maybe. What?
"Qué-hou-hou!" croaked Johnnie, and Marielihou yawned and made a futile attempt to wash behind her ears but found it discomforting to a sore hind-leg, so gave it up and spat at him instead. "And, moreover, I won't have you at my party." "Hou-hou! I'm coming. Ma'm'zelle she ask me." "I'll tell her to send you back-word." "She wun't, she wun't. Where you goin'?"
Johnnie, and presumably Marielihou, lived with an ancient dame who was held by some to be their great-grandmother, and by some to be Marielihou herself. This was a moot and much-discussed point among the neighbours. What was beyond dispute was that Johnnie was said to be grievously maltreated by her at times, and to lead her a deuce of a life, and she him.
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