CHAPTER XI

FIRESIDE REFLECTIONS

“Fortune telling with cards,” Jeanne said thoughtfully after a time, “is very old. Madame Bihari told me all about it many, many times. She truly believed that cards could foretell your fate. Do you think she was wrong?”

“It is strange,” Florence replied in a sober tone. “It is hard to know what to believe. The whole thing seems impossible, and yet—”

“There are many thousands who have believed,” Jeanne broke in. “Many years ago there was a very famous teller of fortunes. He used seventy-eight cards. Those were terrible times, the days of revolution. Men were having their heads cut off because they were called traitors. No one knew who would be next to be suspected and led away to the guillotine.

“Men used to come creeping to Ettella’s place in the middle of the night to ask if their heads were to fall in the morning.

“Can you see it, Florence?” Jeanne spread out her arms in a dramatic gesture. “A dimly lighted room, a haggard face opposite one who quietly shuffles the cards, invites the haggard one to cut the cards, then shuffles again. He spreads them out, one, two, three, four. Nothing to laugh at, Florence—no joke! It is life or death. Could the cards tell? Did they tell? When the fortune teller whispered, ‘You shall live,’ or when he said hoarsely, ‘Tomorrow you shall die,’ did he always speak the truth? Who can say? That was more than a hundred and fifty years ago. But Florence,” Jeanne’s eyes shone with a strange light, “even under those terrible circumstances, men _did_ believe. And they still believe today.”

“Yes.” Florence shook her shoulders as if to waken herself from a bad dream. “But—many of them are frauds of the worst sort. I can prove that. We—” she sprang to her feet. “We shall try it tomorrow. This time you shall have your fortune told. What do you say?”

“Anything you may desire,” Jeanne answered quietly. “Only let us hope it may be a good fortune.”

“That will not matter,” was Florence’s rather strange reply, “for in the end I feel certain that I can prove the fortune teller to be a cheat. And that,” she added, “in spite of the fact that I only know her name is Myrtle Rand and that her ‘studio,’ as she calls it, is in the twenty-five hundred block on North Clark Street.”

“We have agreed to try this,” said Jeanne, “but how will you prove that she is a fraud?”

“You shall see!” Florence laughed. “This wonderful ‘reading’ is going to cost you two whole dollars. This is my prediction. But if you feel it is not worth it, I shall make it up to you out of my expense account.”

“Very well, it is done. Tomorrow my fortune shall be told.” Jeanne lapsed into silence.

It was Miss Mabee who broke in upon that silence.

“Jeanne,” she exclaimed, “we must do something for this beautiful boy musician you found upon the roof! What is it he calls himself?”

“Tum Morrow.”

“Well, we must turn his tomorrow into today. He is too splendid to be lost in the drab life of those who never have a chance. Let me see—

“I have it!” she exclaimed after a moment’s reflection. “There is Tony Piccalo. He is owner of that wonderful restaurant down there in the theatre district. He is a patron of art. He paid me well for two pictures of west side Italian life. He has often urged me to display my pictures at his restaurant. All the rich people go there after a concert or a show. I shall accept his offer. I shall display all my gypsy pictures.

“And of course—” she smiled a wise smile. “We must have gypsy music and gypsy dancing to go with the pictures. You, my Jeanne, shall be the dancer and your Tum Morrow the star musician. What could be sweeter?”

“But Tum is not a gypsy,” Jeanne protested.

“Who cares for that?” the artist laughed. “A few touches of red and brown on his cheeks, a borrowed costume, and who shall know the difference? If we bill him as a gypsy boy, no one will insist upon him joining the union. And who knows but on that night he shall find some good angel with a good deal of money. The angel will pay for his further education. And there you are!”

“But, Miss Mabee,” Jeanne protested, “they will become so absorbed in the show, they will forget your pictures!

“But no!” She sprang to her feet as a sudden inspiration seized her. “We’ll make them look, and we’ll give them one grand shock!

“This is it!” Her manner became animated. “You paint a sketch upon a large square of thin paper, then mount it in a frame. Set it up with all your other pictures, only have it close to the platform where I am to dance.

“I—” she laughed a merry laugh. “I shall entertain them with the wildest gypsy dance ever seen upon the stage, and right in the midst of it I shall leap high, appear to lose my balance, and go crashing right through that picture!”

“Rather fantastic,” said Miss Mabee. “I agree with you in one particular, however. It _will_ give them a surprise. And that, in this drab world, is what people are looking for.”

“You will do the picture?” Jeanne demanded eagerly.

“I will do the picture.”

“A very large one?”

“A very large one,” Miss Mabee echoed.

“And we shall have one very grand show!” Jeanne went rocketing across the floor in that wildest of all gypsy dances.

Three days later the colorful sketch of gypsy life, done on a large square of paper, was finished and framed. It was a beautiful bit of work. At a distance it could scarcely have been told from a real masterpiece.

“Why did you make it so beautiful? How can I destroy it?” Jeanne wailed at sight of it.

Well might some sprite have echoed, “How can she?”

The picture was to meet a stranger fate than that, and to serve an unusual purpose as well.