Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 10

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 gla.s.s 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."