The Girls of Central High on Track and Field Part 5

"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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d 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.

"Very bad. She is a fraud," whispered Mother Wit. "And look out! they think we have seen the girl who ran away and they will try to pump us about her."

"That's what I thought," declared Jess.

"Know all about your past and future, Laura?" asked Bobby Hargrew.

"Dear me! it makes me shiver to think of it," said Nellie. "Does she stir a cauldron, and call on the spirits of the earth and air?"

"She calls on nothing but her own shrewd sense," replied Laura, shortly.

"And she can tell you really nothing. Take my advice, girls, and don't try it."

"Oh!" cried the disappointed Bobby "I did so hope she could tell me--more."

"Don't you believe a thing she told you about trouble coming to you at school," said Eve, quietly.

"You needn't worry about that, Bobs," drawled Dora Lockwood. "You know you are always getting into trouble with Gee Gee."

"Maybe she could tell me how to circ.u.mvent her," sighed Bobby.

"You'll never get the best of Miss Grace Carrington," said Jess, decidedly; "so give up all hope of _that_."

"Let the little lady try it--do," whined one of the women. "She can learn much, perhaps. Because one fails, that is no reason why another should not succeed."

"I'd like to try it," said Bobby, earnestly.

Laura whispered: "What they want to find out is if we saw the girl who has run away from them, and if we know where she is. Be careful."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive," Laura replied. "She caught me with her questions. She knows I saw the girl. I told her nothing else."

The queen came to the opening of the tent and beckoned to Bobby. She seemed to know instinctively which girl was anxious to try her arts.

"Oh, Bobby," whispered Dorothy. "Maybe you'd better not--as Laura says."

"I want to see for myself," said the other girl, doggedly.

And she moved toward the Gypsy's tent. Laura gathered the other girls about her. One of the women was so near that she could overhear anything said louder than a whisper.

"I want to get away from here at once," said Laura, quietly. "Let us buy any little things they may have for sale, and go on our way. We can get away better now when there are only two men in the camp than we can when those other three--and the bloodhound--get back."

"Oh, mercy me!" gasped Jess. "I had forgotten about the bloodhound."

"Hush!" murmured Laura. "Don't let that woman hear you."

But it was evident that the Gypsy woman had heard. She uttered a sentence or two in Romany and the two men whom the girls had seen before at the camp appeared. They did not come near, but sat by the roadside that pa.s.sed through the hollow, and filled their pipes and smoked. It was quite evident that they were on guard.