Gertrude Morrison - The Girls of Central High on Track and Field

“Beware of the ‘black man coming with a bundle,’” hissed Bobby, giggling.

“Hush!” exclaimed Jess. “She means Mammy Jinny, Laura’s old nurse.”

Grace Varey had turned swiftly to the scoffing Bobby, and she pointed at her with an accusing finger.

“You do not believe,” she said, quickly. “You are light and thoughtless. You have been spoiled by a doting father. You have no mother – poor child! You are very frivolous and light-hearted; but a great sorrow is coming into your life soon. Into your school life, I believe. It is connected with one of your teachers – a woman. Beware!”

Now, this was very melodramatic; but Bobby, for some reason, could not laugh at it. The woman was too much in earnest. Suddenly Grace Varey’s manner changed, and she whined:

“Cross the poor Gypsy’s palm with silver, and she will tell you more. Only two shillings, little lady,” and she urged Laura toward the tent.

“All right,” said Mother Wit. “If the rest of you are game, I am. But don’t back out afterward.”

“Not if she is genuine,” said Jess, laughing.

Bobby hadn’t a word to say; for the moment she was quelled.

But all that the woman had said could be easily explained by the science of deduction – which is merely observation raised to the nth power.

Mother Wit went into the tent and found it a rather gloomy place. There was a folding table and two divans, besides some dingy hangings. It was evidently arranged for the purpose of fortune telling and nothing else.

“Sit down, lady,” said the Gypsy queen. “Let me see your hand. Do you believe in the reading of character by the lines of the hand?”

“I do not know whether I do or not,” replied Laura, calmly.

The woman laughed lightly. She peered at the lines of Laura’s palm for a moment, and then said:

“You believe nothing without investigation. For so young a person you are very cautious, and you have much good sense. You are sharp and intelligent. And you are gentle-hearted. In short, your friends love you very dearly, and you are very faithful to them. Is it not so?”

“You flatter me,” said Laura, quietly.

She noted that the woman was no longer holding her hand by the fingers; that she had shifted her own hand to Laura’s wrist, and that two of the queen’s fingers were resting lightly on her pulse – just as Dr. Agnew held a patient’s hand when he counted the throbbing of his heart.

“Oh, I know,” went on the Gypsy, in her whining, sing-song way. “You would be faithful in every event. If you had a secret you could keep it – surely. For instance,” she added, without changing her tone or raising her voice, “if you had seen the girl with the yellow handkerchief and green skirt, and the little, puckered blue scar high up – near the right temple – you would not tell where she was – which direction she had gone.”

That was why the woman was feeling her pulse! Laura knew her heart jumped at the question. She might control her features; but the woman’s question had startled her, and that sudden heart-throb had told the shrewd queen what she wished to know.

She smiled lazily, in the dim light, upon the girl before her. She knew that Laura Belding and her friends had seen the fugitive from the Gypsy camp.

Laura Belding was as quick to think as she was to act. She remained perfectly calm after the woman’s question – calm outwardly, at least. Now she spoke:

“You have spoken a very true thing now. If I had seen such a girl I should not tell you. And this has nothing to do with my own fortune. I have paid you to tell me something about my future – which you seem to know so well.”

This spurring phrase put the woman on her mettle. She flushed slowly under her dark skin.

“You are a heretic – you do not believe,” she said.

“I must be shown before I believe,” returned Laura, confidently.

“Then what comes to you in the future will only prove the case,” laughed the Gypsy queen. “You do not believe in palmistry,” and she tossed the hand from her lightly.

“Neither do you,” said Laura, bluntly. “You did not hold my hand then to enable you to read my palm, but for another purpose.”

“You are a shrewd lady,” said the Gypsy. “I read character in other ways than by palmistry – it is true.”

She looked at Laura for some seconds very earnestly. Of course, Mother Wit did not believe this Gypsy had any occult power; but her deep black eyes were wonderfully compelling, and it might be that there was something in “mind reading.”

“You have an intention now that, if followed to its conclusion, will bring you trouble, young lady. Just what that intention may be, or what trouble it may bring, I cannot say exactly,” declared the woman, slowly and impressively. “But it deals with a person you have never seen but once – I believe, recently. It seems that you may think you are helping her – ”

“That is not prophesying,” said Laura, quickly, and interrupting the Gypsy queen. “I shall scarcely think your information worth what I have paid you if you do not do better than that.”

“What do you mean?” demanded the woman, hastily, and with a flush coming into her cheek again.

“You know very well that you are warning me not to assist the girl who has run away from this camp,” Mother Wit said, boldly.

“Ha! Then you did see her?” cried the Gypsy.

“You know I did. You played a trick on me to find out. You are not telling my fortune, but you are endeavoring to find out, through me, about the girl who has run away. And I tell you right now, you will not learn anything further from me – or from the other girls.”

The Gypsy queen gazed at her with lowering brows; but Laura Belding neither “shivered nor shook.”

“You are quite courageous – for a girl,” observed the woman, at last.

“I may be, or not. But I am intelligent enough to know when I am being fooled. Unless you have something of importance to tell me I shall conclude that this fortune-telling seance is ended,” and Laura rose from her seat.

“Wait,” said the woman, in a low voice. “I will tell you one thing. You may not consider it worth your attention now, little lady; but it will prove so in the end. Do not cross the Romany folk – it is bad luck! ”

“And I do not believe in ‘luck,’” rejoined Laura, smiling. She was determined not to let the woman see that she was at all frightened. Surely these people would not dare detain, or injure, seven girls.

“An unbeliever!” muttered the Gypsy woman. “We can tell nothing to an unbeliever.”

“And having got from her all you are likely to get,” said Laura, coolly, “your prophecies are ended, are they?”

Queen Grace waved her hand toward the tent flap. “Send in one of your companions,” she said. “Any one of them. I am angry with you, and when passion controls me I can see nothing, little lady.”

But Laura Belding went forth, fully determined that none of her friends should waste their money upon the chance that the Gypsy queen might see into the future for them.

“It’s wicked, anyway,” decided Mother Wit. “If God thought it best for us to know what the future had in store for us, he would have put it within the power of every person to know what was coming. Professional palmists, and fortune-tellers of all sorts, are merely wicked persons who wish to get foolish people’s money!”

She found the six other girls grouped in the middle of the camp, trying to understand one of the women, who was talking to them, and evidently not a little frightened.

“Oh, Laura! How did it go?” demanded Jess, running to her.