The tramp, seeing he was in earnest, and that there was nothing more to be got out of him, waxed bold and defiant.
“You’d do that, would you Squire?” she snarled. “All right. Maybe there’s them as knows more about your little game than you thinks of. Maybe you’ll not be finding everything as easy always; no, and I ’opes yer won’t—tramplin’ upon a pore woman who’s tryin’ to make a honest livin’.” And, cursing and growling, the hag shuffled off down the road.
In his then frame of mind the words were startling to Wagram. What on earth—was his altered position already common property? was his first thought, as he read into the malevolent words the very last meaning that the mind of their utterer could have held.
“I am surprised at you, Miss Calmour,” he said gravely, “listening to the pestiferous humbug of the commonest type of hedge-side charlatan. Really, I had a better opinion of you.”
“And—has it fled?” answered the girl, with a pretty pleading penitence that was not wholly mock. “I only let her tell my fortune for the fun of the thing—and she said some very queer things—not at all after the pattern of stock bosh which I had expected. In fact, they were rather weird—about green seas, smooth and oily, and a battered ship—and terrors—and perhaps death, but if not death, then great happiness. Yes; really it was quite creepy; strange too, for what on earth can I ever have to do with battered ships or green seas—or great happiness either?” she added to herself mournfully. Then again, aloud: “But do you think there may be anything in these people’s powers of prediction?”
“No, I do not,” he answered decisively, and with some sternness. “Certainly not. The knowledge of the future is in other hands than those of a common wayside impostor, whom, if I were doing my duty, I ought to have at once had arrested and locked up on a former occasion when she tried to play that humbugging game in my presence.”
“Oh yes; she got into the wrong corner this time,” laughed Delia. “You are a magistrate, are you not, Mr Wagram?”
“I have seen this particular fraud before, and gave her a trifle, as she seemed really in want,” he answered. “In strict duty I ought to have had her locked up, but strict duty is rather a hard thing to carry out always. But anything that encourages superstition is to me especially abhorrent. The greatest harm these impostors do is not merely in obtaining hard-earned silver from ignorant people but in keeping alive the idea that they can possess any supernatural power—let alone wisdom—at all.”
The girl looked at him with a covert smile.
“Be merciful to one of those ‘ignorant people,’” she said softly. “Though, really, I did not believe in any supernatural power about the affair; I only let her do it for the fun of the thing.”