"Hey! No cursing and swearing, boy!--I can't abide it.... Did something happen maybe? You know--spill salt at supper? Something?" She was serious, lightly worried. Ben shook his head. "Why, there!" She pointed at his jacket tossed on a chair, a bit of his kerchief dangling from a pocket. "Swoonds, that's bad luck as ever was," she said, and rolled off the bed to push the kerchief out of sight. "No bloody wonder!" Ben knew she would take great offense if he laughed. Anyway the darkness of a new fear was killing laughter. She sat by a little square of wall-mirror to put her hair to rights. Ben ordered his clothes, finding his legs too large, blurred, disobedient. Maybe the last of that buttered rum would steady him. He gulped it down. "I'm sorry," said Ben. "Hoo, it's a nothing, boy, happens all the time. Come again some day," she said, and could not resist a small parting cruelty: "When you're old enough." The darkness of the new fear followed him out of the room, and the name of it was Pox. Mistress Gundy sat as before with her rum, or somebody's rum, and nodded to Ben, waving her puckered hand in some cryptic courtesy. Her eyes were swimming--sad or hilarious or both. Somewhere down the hallway a woman was whimpering rhythmically. "Top of the evening, young man. I'm bloody mellow." Mistress Gundy patted her lips. "Going so soon? Parcel's yonder, needn't make out I'm keeping a den of thieves." "Thank you. Had no such thought." "No dallying with Venus? Up and off like a little bull? I'm bloody mellow or I wouldn't speak so free, but I say a bit of broad speech never hurt no one, la, besides, I lived on a farm when I was a little maid. Lord, the Surrey countryside, and I'll never see it again!" She wept comfortably, and burped. "A'n't you waiting for your friend?" "I must be going. Tell him I couldn't wait." "Tsha!" She drank, her little finger thrust out for gentility. "Come again, do. I feel sorry for you. My weakness." She held up her free hand earnestly to detain him. "Understand? I feel like a mother to you, but you--you--you----" "I must be going." "That's right, boy, turn away from an old whore. You--you--have--not--got the least notion wha's like to be old and lorn and forsaken, every man's bloo' hand raised against you. Have you? Colonial. _You_ never saw no earl, not in this Godforsaken land, marry you never. Why, one of the particular maids to 'is lady I was, and he got it in a linen-closet, now that's no lie as your nasty-spoken Irish friend would say. Understand?--the very self-same sheets 'er ladyship slep' on, the mere smell of lavender can still set me a-thinking of it, and her playing cards only two rooms away, if I'd so much as whimpered he might've been caught what they call flagrant delicious, and you think I'd do any such of a thing, loyal as I was? It shows your God-damned bloody ignorance, all the same there was a time you wouldn't've turned away."