“I’d rather not, please,” said Sophy, timidly.
“Rather not?—very odd. Why?”
“I don’t want to know the future.”
“That is odder and odder,” quoth the Cobbler, staring; “I never heard a girl say that afore.”
“Wait till she’s older, Mr. Merle,” said Waife: “girls don’t want to know the future till they want to be married.”
“Summat in that,” said the Cobbler. He took up the crystal. “Have you looked into this ball, pretty one, as I bade ye?”
“Yes, two or three times.”
“Ha! and what did you see?”
“My own face made very long,” said Sophy,—“as long as that—,” stretching out her hands.
The Cobbler shook his head dolefully, and screwing up one eye, applied the other to the mystic ball.