Oh, the glory of waking up in the morning and then before you have time
to wonder where you are, seeing the telegraph poles flying by! On a
train, on a train, on a train, Peggy's joyous thought kept time to the
sound of the wheels on the rails. After looking interestedly out for a
few minutes on a barren sort of white crusted country, level as a
prairie and without house or building of any kind, Peggy turned and
shook Katherine heartily by the shoulder.
"Poor child," she shouted into the other's reluctant ears, "I hate to
waken you, but open your eyes and tell me if you think we're nearly
there?"
"Where?" murmured Katherine and sank back into the peace of slumber.
"Why, there, THERE, at your home--will--you--wake--up?" Each of the last
words was accompanied by more vigorous shaking, "as--I--said--" shake,
shake, "I--hate--to--waken--you--"
"Yes, you do," reproached Katherine in perfectly normal tones, turning
staring mockingly at her room-mate. "Yes, you hate it--I thought you
were a wreck, you shook me so hard."
"I am a wreck after all that difficulty to make you wake up," declared
Peggy serenely. "Now, let's hurry and go to breakfast."
"Do you know what your new name is going to be as soon as we get back to
school?" threatened Katherine.
"No," indifferently.
"Pig Peggy."
"Oh," said Peggy, "well, I'll look you up one in the dictionary,--maybe
in the _Latin_ dictionary, and then you'll never know what it means and
can't pay me back for it."
It is surprising how quickly two girls can be ready for breakfast when
they hear the waiter crying out "Last--call for breakfast--" through a
rocking train.
Grape-fruit, coffee, and toast was what they ordered, and then they
laughed to find that every other girl in the diner was eating exactly
the same thing. For grape-fruit, coffee, and toast is the college and
school girl train-breakfast the country over.
"I feel as if I'd been away a hundred years," said Katherine excitedly
as the train at last pulled into the station. "Oh, they'll all be down
at the train, I wired them to. And how proud I'll be to show them you,
Peggy, and tell them that you are the one they've heard so much about in
all my letters since the very first, which was full of your rose-tree
episode."
The porter had already gone ahead with their bags, and they, peering
eagerly out of the windows as they made their way to the platform,
sought to catch a glimpse of Katherine's family.
As they stepped off it seemed to Peggy that a veritable whirlpool
engulfed them. On every side were enthusiastic people kissing her and
Katherine indiscriminately. And she in her gladness to get there and her
happiness in meeting with such friendly acceptance kissed them back with
impartial enthusiasm, Katherine's mother and father, her younger sister,
an aunt, and three "kid brothers"--these were the reception committee
that were now hustling the girls to the big waiting automobile that
belonged to Katherine's father and overwhelming them with expressions of
pleasure and welcome.
The house, when they came to it, was a great homey affair, with many
rich rugs and pictures that did not, however, dazzle by their
magnificence but seemed to fit into the general atmosphere of comfort.
Peggy, who had never visited in so wonderful a place before, danced from
attic to cellar, as light as thistledown, and sent the whole family into
roars of appreciative laughter at her naive and hearty approval of it
all.
"You're home, now, Peggy," Katherine said.
And Peggy nodded happily. "Why, of course," was her comment. "It
certainly feels like it, and I _love_ every darling member of your
perfectly grand family, Katherine Foster."
Two days after their arrival the Fosters had a Christmas party for them,
and for the first time in her life Peggy helped to trim a Christmas
tree, and wrap up such an enormous number of tiny tissue-covered bundles
that her fingers ached from tying string.
There was the grand march around the tree, the gorgeous Christmas
supper, and afterward dancing and dancing and dancing until Peggy's head
whirled and her very heart beat time to music.
On Christmas day there came for each of the girls a fascinating little
package bearing the Huntington address on the outside. Katherine's was a
woven gold chain with a delicate and beautiful pearl pendant attached,
and Peggy's was a watch with a good sized diamond sparkling in its
handwrought gold.
"Oh--how _lovely_," breathed she in ecstatic surprise, and then suddenly
her face clouded. "We forgot to send him a thing," she reminded
contritely.
"Never mind," comforted Katherine, "we'll go to the clairvoyant and help
get his grandson back for him and I guess that will mean more to him
than any little set of cuff links or knitted tie we might have given
him."
"So we will," mused Peggy, "do you think we could go to-morrow?"
Not the morrow, but the day before New Year's finally saw Katherine's
family persuaded to let the two girls go to Madame Blakey, who had
really a considerable reputation in the town for correctly reading
futures in her glass of water. Not that Katherine's father and mother
believed in that sort of thing, but they actually knew people who seemed
to, and they could see no harm in permitting the girls to go. But when
the two daring experimenters with things yet to come had been conveyed
by James, the chauffeur, in their big touring car to the residence of
Madame, they found all the blinds closed and no sign of life about the
place anywhere. A woman from next door told them that Madame Blakey had
gone away on her vacation to visit relatives.
"Well," sighed Katherine in miserable disappointment, "I suppose other
people have to have vacations too. But it does seem heartbreaking that
all our plans should be spoiled and poor Mr. Huntington should never
find his grandson, after all."
"Yes," agreed Peggy, brushing away the baffled tears, "isn't there
somebody else in town who--who sees things ahead?"
"Oh," objected Katherine, "not that mother would let us go to--but
listen, we might go first and then explain all about it and she'd
understand our motive. Let's look in the personals of the newspaper.
Sometimes there is one advertised there."
So they sent James for a paper and eagerly scanned its columns until
they found in inviting, bold type, "Madame La Mar, palmist and
clairvoyant. I read the future: I tell your past: consult me about your
business or your heart affairs."
"Ah," cried Katherine, and she read the address to James, while she
squeezed Peggy's hand under the heavy robe.
A few minutes later the machine had drawn up before a frowsy little
apartment building, very different from and far less prepossessing than
the neat, newly painted little house of Madame Blakey's.
In spite of James' expression of mild surprise, the two girls got out
and entered the building, searching as they did so for some card or call
board by which they might locate Madame La Mar's rooms. There was no
lock system on the doors and no cards of residents. They went on into
the main hall and saw a row of uninviting doors, each with some name
scrawled on it in pencil. On one door alone was a soiled visiting card
bearing the proud name of Madame La Mar.
"Do you dare knock?" asked Katherine.
"Maybe I will in a--in a minute," hesitated Peggy. "Don't you think
perhaps we'd better have James in?"
"No," said Katherine, "he's right out there, anyway, and could hear us
if we wanted him for anything, and this apartment must face the street,
so we could lean out and call him if it gets too trancified for us in
there."
But they did not have to work up their courage to the point of forcing
themselves to knock on the door, for the great Madame La Mar herself,
hearing their whispering voices, now threw it open and stood before them
in all the magnificence of tight fitting black velvet embroidered with
occasional sequins that glittered here and there.
She was a big woman with vivid black eyes and black hair turning in
places to gray. Her cheeks bloomed with an unnatural radiance, and her
eyebrows were the longest and the most arched and the most charcoal
dusky that Peggy had ever seen off the stage.
"Ah," crooned a honeyed voice, "did you want to see me?"
Katherine, speechless, nodded.
"Was it about--did you want a reading?" There was a very professional
business-like quality now creeping into the voice in addition to its
first honeyed accents.
"Yes," Peggy answered up.
"Did you have an appointment or have you ever come to me before?"
temporized the woman.
"No," said Peggy, "but we thought--we thought you might be willing to
see us anyway."
"Yes, yes, indeed, come in," said the woman vaguely. "Come in and we
will have a little music."
The girls were seated, full of bewilderment, in a sunny, rather vacant
room, while the seeress swished across the floor like an animated
mountain and, going over to a piano on which the dust shone, sat down
and began to play a simple exercise like those Peggy had practiced when
she was a child and had her fingers rapped if she made a mistake.
In increasing wonderment the two watched the self-confident figure
picking out its little exercise and apparently completely oblivious of
their presence and as thrilled by the feeble tinkle, tinkle it was
accomplishing, as if the sound were a whole orchestra of beautiful
music.
After a time she stopped, and turned to the girls with a small smile. "I
like music," she said. "Oh, so fond of music. I'm taking lessons."
"She needs 'em," whispered Katherine.
"Did you enjoy my little roundelay?" she inquired anxiously.
"It was--it was very nice," Peggy tried to say politely. "But we thought
you were Madame La Mar, the fortune teller."
"I _am_ Madame La Mar," responded the woman, as pleased as peaches.
"Yes, indeed, who else could be her, you know?"
"Her grammar!" groaned Katherine in a tiny voice.
"Now if you will come into the studio," the woman urged, "I will read
for you from the past, present or future or all three of them. Just
state your desires."
"There was something special," Peggy told her, "we thought you might be
able to read ahead for us."
"Of course," agreed the generous creature, "anything. But my charge is a
dollar a person."
"That's all right."
"Then come in. Now the young lady in the caracal coat sit on my left,
please, and you other on my right. I shall want you to keep very still
and not disturb the workings of the supernatural. Which would you rather
have me do, tell you by cards or by your palm or by the crystal?"
"Will--will one be just as effective as the other?" asked Peggy
doubtfully.
"Be as what?"
"Be as effective, as good, you know, Madame La Mar."
"Oh, yes," explained the seeress condescendingly. "I can tell it one way
as well as another and I never make a mistake. I'm not like some of
these people in this town--limited, you know, to a single style. You can
choose any sort whatever and it goes with me. I'm a woman of my word, I
am," her voice was rising, "and I challenge any other clarvoy'nt in this
town to tell as much for the money as I do, why--"
"Yes, yes, I'm sure," pacified Peggy. "And now suppose you tell us
something. It's what we came for."
"With the crystal," Katherine put in, "and maybe our palms too."
"No, not our palms," cried Peggy in consternation, looking at the rather
dirty red hands of the husky fortune teller. "I think the crystal alone
is best."
"Well, then." The red hands caught up a little crystal globe that was
lying on the table. "All look into this with me, just as hard as you
can," she urged, "and think with all your might about the question you
want me to solve for you, and pretty soon I'll see things come in here
and that will be the future."
The room settled down to a curious, stifling, nerve-racking silence
while the prophetess gazed into her gleaming crystal.
She was breathing hard, and after a time it seemed to the two girls that
a faint film or cloud went across the glassy brightness of the little
globe, and this filminess took vague shape and disappeared.
Each girl thought as hard as she could. "How can we find Mr.
Huntington's grandson for him? Where is he now?"
Finally, in a sepulchral voice, startlingly different from her own, the
woman began to speak: "I see a girl," she murmured.
This beginning was so far from promising and so utterly different from
what they had someway expected that Katherine burst out into hysterical
laughter. "She could see two of 'em if she looked very hard," she
chortled too audibly in her friend's ear.
"There, you've broken the spell," complained the woman peevishly. "How
can you expect me to find the future for a pack of laughing hyenas that
don't believe what I'm telling them, anyway?"
"Oh, please," said Peggy, much ashamed of Katherine's rude outburst, "we
want to hear it, and we will perhaps believe it when we have heard
something. Indeed, Katherine wasn't doubting what you _did_ say, you
know--she only--"
"Quiet," hissed the woman.
Was it true that a cloud, filmy and light and vapory went drifting
across the clear crystal surface again? The girls felt no impulse to
laugh now.
"I see a girl--I see snow--"
Katherine thought that she couldn't help it if she looked out of the
window, but this time refrained from comment and held her breath while
she watched the mysterious smoky appearance of the crystal.
"I see a loss of a long time ago--many years--relative torn from
relative--"
Peggy and Katherine clutched at each other's knees.
"Walking, walking, so tired," mumbled the woman, "a long white field. I
see an initial--let's see what the initial is. Is it A? no, it is not A.
Is it B--no, no, now I have it, it is H."
Peggy gave a tiny scream and the voice continued:
"Cold, very cold, far east of here and a little north. A college room, a
mandolin, a young man plays on the mandolin. Also I see--" the voice
rose excitedly, "a school lawn, a moon, this time it is warm, I do not
understand it, and a group of young men are picking up little--little
roses from the ground, and a girl leans from a window--"
"Peggy," screamed Katherine, "she means the time the rose tree fell
out."
Here the prophetess burst into tears and shoving the crystal away from
her declared that she would not read another thing for two such ill
mannered young ladies who dragged her in and out of her trances just as
if these were not the worst kind of nervous strain. She was through with
them, she was. Just as she was beginning to see something of interest
they shouted at her and spoiled it all. What kind of spirits would
remain in a room with two girls that acted like that? They could pay her
their dollar apiece, they could, and go, and she would go back to her
music and think herself well rid of them, she was sure. Thank them, and
_good-by_, and please don't ever come and bother her again with their
hoydenish ways. Could they find their way to the street? She, for her
part, was too unnerved to take them.
With their heads still whirling from the queerness of it all the two
girls groped their way out through the dark hall and drew in great
breaths when they were once more safe in the sunlight of the street.
They stumbled forward toward the car, where the imperturbable James was
awaiting them. As they were about to clamber in Peggy clutched at her
room-mate's sleeve.
"Look back, she's watching us," warned Peggy, and there sure enough in
the window of the room they had just quitted were the outlines of the
great figure of the black velvet prophetess, a curious brilliant
fixedness in her dark eyes.
"I think she got her initial from the door of your car,
Katherine--look."
Katherine's father's initials were H. B. F., Howard Baker Foster, and of
course the seeress could have seen them, looking down into the street as
she was now.
"Maybe," demurred Katherine, "but, Peggy, someway I don't believe she
did. I think that H stood for Huntington just as all the rest of her
story seemed to have some truth in it, and if only my feelings hadn't
gotten away with me we'd be there yet, hearing all the things that are
ever going to happen to us, I'm perfectly convinced."
"Well, evidently, Young Grandson is in college somewhere," interposed
Peggy flippantly. "You remember about the college room and the mandolin?
I'm glad that his poverty didn't prevent his getting a fine education,
anyway. Now we've got a clue, all we have to do to find him, friend
Watson, is to go to all the men's colleges and walk through all the
dorms until we come to a room from which the gentle tinkle of a mandolin
steals forth--and then, and then--we knock on the door. Young Grandson
answers it, and--there we are. We take him back to Mr. Huntington and
all goes well. And listen, Watson, my dear detective companion, I think
our search through those colleges is just going to be one of the
jolliest things that ever happened to two nice-looking girls."
"You forget that we won't know Young Grandson when we see him."
"Clues, my dear Watson, clues. No detective ever went far without
finding clues. First, we shall run across his picture in one of the
college annuals. And we shall say, 'Why, here, what a strong resemblance
this picture bears to Mr. Huntington, of Huntington House.' And that's
the first thing. We read under the picture and find that his name is
John James Smith, and then we go to the registrar--"
By this time the car was rounding the Foster drive, and the two girls
alighted, in haste to tell all of Katherine's interested and somewhat
disapproving family about their adventures with the soothsayer.
Each of the small brothers agreed with Katherine that it must be all
true, but that was the only support she found at home for her belief.
----
When it came time for the girls to start back to Andrews, they were torn
with conflicting emotions. They were glad they were going back, and yet
they could hardly bear to tear themselves away from the home that seemed
now to belong to Peggy, too. So when they and their suit-cases were at
last regretfully taken to the train by the entire family, the girls were
dissolved in a flood of tears as they settled themselves for the
journey, and the train had been under way some two hours before they
managed to say a single word to each other.