“Peace, brethren,” interposed Jack. “We’ll do this thing on the level. My claims to coarseness are just as strong as either of yours, but do you see me engaging in unseemly brawls? Nay and again nay. We’ll pull straws for it and may the coarsest man win.”
“I don’t know that we want any of you,” said Cora. “We don’t take incurable cases.”
“Don’t be too harsh, Cora,” said Belle. “You know they say there’s a spark of good in the very lowest.”
“While the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return,”
hummed Bess.
There were no straws at hand, but some matches served as well, and Walter proved to be the lucky one. Belle agreed to go to Jack’s car, and Walter took her place alongside of Bess.
“Hurrah!” cried Walter, as he availed himself of his good fortune. “I’m saved. I’m doomed to refinement.”
“Doomed?” laughed Cora.
“Did I say doomed?” Walter answered. “How careless of me! Of course I meant destined to refinement.”
“I suppose you’ll be eating lotus blossoms and water lilies before long,” called out Jack, as the cars started up again.
“Watch me when lunch time comes,” grinned Walter. “But I don’t mind what you fellows say. I’ve got two refining influences while you have only one.”
“You need all you can get,” was Jack’s parting shot.
With merry chaff and banter, the time flew by as though on wings. They had lunch at a quaint little inn by the roadside, and Walter proved that the charms of feminine society had not yet begun to affect his appetite. But then, as he explained, the cure would be all the more effective if it were gradual, and he had plenty of time yet to climb to higher planes.
In the early afternoon they were turning a bend in the road, when Cora gave a sudden exclamation.
“Look!” she cried, pointing to a little glade at the right of the road. “There’s a camp of some kind. I do believe it’s gypsies!”
“Guessed it right the first time,” declared Walter.
“That’s what it is,” agreed Bess. “Oh, Cora, don’t you think we might stop a few minutes? I’d dearly love to have a look at them, if you think we can spare the time.”
“I’m not so very keen about it myself,” said Cora dubiously, for as those familiar with her previous adventures will remember, her experiences with these picturesque vagabonds had not been devoid of unpleasantness and danger. “But I’ll see what Jack says about it, and if he thinks we have time, I won’t mind stopping.”
She hailed Jack, and, after consulting his watch, the latter agreed that they could easily spare a half-hour or so for a visit to the gypsy camp.
They drew their cars to the side of the road and picked their way through the woods to the little dell where the gypsy encampment lay.
It was a typical camp of those strange nomads in whose blood runs the “call of the wild,” and who in their mode of life are almost as far removed from other human beings as though they lived upon another planet.
There were perhaps a dozen vans, from which came strange smells of cooking, amid which onion and garlic predominated. Unkempt children in tattered clothing played with dogs that seemed to be legion, while wrinkled and slatternly women sat on the steps of the vans or made their way through the grounds, whining their requests to visitors to cross their palms with silver and learn in return all that pertained to their present and future. Swarthy men, some of them with huge ear-rings and with sashes and turbans that reminded one of the pirates of tradition, lay sprawled out on the grass watching the throng with eyes that were sometimes indifferent and again sullen and smoldering.
There were just two elements that redeemed the camp from its general aspect of squalor and forlornness. One was the fine horses that were scattered here and there, for the gypsy has the keenest eye for a good animal of any trader on earth. The other was the presence of several gypsy girls of a wild barbaric type of beauty, whose flashing eyes and gaudy trinkets contrasted with the prevailing ugliness of their surroundings.
There were a large number of visitors present, due to the proximity of a large town a mile or so away, through which the automobiles had passed just before reaching the camp.
“Here’s the place to have your future told,” said Jack.
“Lucky they can’t tell our past,” remarked Walter. “What a give-away that would be for some of us.”
“I hope you haven’t any deep dark secret that would ‘chill the young blood, harrow up our souls’ if it were told,” laughed Cora.
“Walter just wants to make himself interesting,” gibed Bess.
“Well, whatever I may have been, I’m all right now that you girls have undertaken to refine me,” replied Walter.
“I’m realizing more and more what a tremendous contract it is,” Cora came back at him. “But look at that girl over there? Isn’t she a beauty?”
“She isn’t hard to look at, for a fact,” said Jack judicially, as his eyes fell on the gypsy girl his sister had indicated. “I think I’ll get her to tell my fortune. I want to know whether I’m born to be hanged or drowned.”
“It’s safe to say that you’re booked for a long life anyway,” remarked Paul. “Only the good die young.”
The girl had seen that the party were regarding her with interest, and she came over to them.
“Do you ladies want to have your fortunes told?” she asked with a winning smile that showed two rows of beautiful white teeth.
The girls hesitated.
“Go ahead, girls, and show the sporting spirit,” urged Jack. “You can get the promise of a perfectly good husband for fifty cents. And that’s cheap in these days of high prices.”
“It’s more than some of them are worth,” laughed Belle.
“I hope that isn’t a shot at us,” said Paul. “I’d be a bargain at a dollar.”
“She must have been thinking of that Higby fellow over at Roxbury,” said Bess. “Why, what’s the matter?” she asked, as the gypsy girl started violently and turned deadly pale.
Cora sprang to the girl’s side and put her arm around her to steady her.
CHAPTER VI
A PERPLEXING PROBLEM
The gypsy girl regained her self-control in a moment and gently put Cora’s helping arm aside.
“It is nothing,” she said. “I just had an attack of dizziness. The heat of the sun, perhaps.”
It was evident that this last remark was only a pretext, for a pleasant breeze was blowing and they were standing under a great tree that shaded them completely.
“I hope it wasn’t anything I said that startled you,” said Bess curiously.
“How could it have been?” put in Belle incredulously. “You only referred jokingly to that Higby fellow who nearly got away with Cora’s purse when we were shopping yesterday. I’m sure there’s nothing in that to startle anybody.”
Cora had been watching the girl intently, and at this second mention of the young man’s name she saw a swift spasm – was it of pain or fright or a combination of both? – sweep over the girl’s face.
“Well, never mind,” said Cora briskly, “if you’re sure you’re all right now. Perhaps you’d better have a drink of water. Jack, suppose you go to the car and get one of the drinking cups.”
Jack started