Read The Water Devil for Free Online Page B

didn't you call me? You know that day or night I would come.”
    “Times seemed different, somehow.”
    “Different? Nothing's different. Oh—oh, my goodness, did you think it was because—”
    “Well, you do have a lot of grand friends since we returned to the City from our trip over the waters.”
    “Mother Hilde! Those are money-friends and fair-weather friends and downright false friends. Not true friends like you. Oh, the trouble that purchased knighthood has made! Who'd have thought it would tangle things up so?”
    “Then you are still the same Margaret after all!”
    “Always, always, Mother Hilde,” I said as we fell into each other's arms.
    “But, Mother Hilde, when is Brother Malachi coming out? I had something important to ask,” said Cecily, breaking into our sentimental moment. Mother Hilde went and put her eye to a crack in the door of the back room, Brother Malachi's laboratorium.
    “With company here, it's high time he came out, process or no process. Let's see. Cecily, hand me the towel there, I'll take the lid off the pottage kettle and see if the smell will lure him out. He and Sim haven't had a bite since the middle of last night, when they consumed an entire loaf of bread and a couple of salted herrings.” But at the very moment the lid was lifted, there was a sudden cry from the back room, and a loud noise, like, “whump!” Mother Hilde and I leapt with the shock of it, and she slammed the lid back on the kettle as if the act of removing it had caused the commotion, and it could all be fixed by putting it back again. The door to the laboratorium burst open, and a dense, stinking cloud billowed into the room. In the midst of the cloud, a round, shortish figure appeared, his pink face blackened with soot, bellowing curses and slapping at sparks on his robe. Behind him, another even shorter figure, an equally sooty, big headed, lopsided youth in a russet tunic, was trying to blow away the smoke by waving his cap at it.
    “Sim! Stop that! You'll just stir up the smell,” cried Brother Malachi. “Ah, Margaret! Back again! You have just witnessed an historic moment! I've got—” But Mother Hilde was opening the shutters with newfound agility. Wind and smoke battled at the windowsill, and cold gusts of air made the fire under the kettle sway and leap.
    “Oh, Malachi, my love, must historic moments always smell bad?” said Mother Hilde, choking and waving her hands in front of her face as if to disperse the stinking cloud. But Malachi, his eyes running, was almost dancing with excitement.
    “The black crow! It flew! This latest method has done it! From here it's only a step to the White Stone! When the smoke clears and the crucible cools, we ought to see it lying there. I tell you, this process of Arnold of Villanova is the most lucid, the most clear I have ever worked with—” Suddenly he spied us in the room. Just asin the old days, I had thrown open the door to help disperse the smoke. Cecily, her hands over her nose and mouth, was turning purple in an attempt to keep the smell out by holding her breath, and Alison, her nose pinched between thumb and forefinger, was taking advantage of the confusion to rummage about in search of another honey cake. “Stop that,” I whispered fiercely, abandoning the door to grab her by the back of the neck.
    “Ah, what's this I see? A party? Margaret, I haven't seen you for ages. Ah, I see the tonic bottle's out.” He picked up the earthenware bottle and peered into it. “And this kettle on the fire?” He stooped into the fireplace and lifted the lid. “Why, soup, too. If my olfactory faculties were not entirely drowned by the smell of my experiment, I imagine it might smell good. Food! How could I have forgotten it? My brain needs renewal—I imagine Sim might crave a little something, too, ah, excellent, Hilde, my jewel, how did I ever live without you?” As the smell thinned and vanished, Mother Hilde, her eyes still winking back tears from