“Oh, I’m quite ready,” said Bartley Bradstone, but with anything but alacrity; and, leaning on his elbow, he extended his right hand reluctantly.
“The left, if you please, gentleman,” said the woman.
“You are mighty particular,” he said, with an uneasy laugh, and he shifted his position, and gave her the left hand.
As he did so the man took a step forward, and whispered something in the woman’s ear.
Her face did not change from its impassibility, but she bent lower over Bartley Bradstone’s hand, and amidst the almost solemn silence she said in the dreamy voice she had adopted in the former cases:
“It is a fair hand, a clever hand; but there are lines that trouble the poor gypsy. Lines of the past, and the coming future. Beware of the woman with the black eyes and the cut lip.”
Bartley Bradstone changed color, and snatched his hand away.
“That will do,” he said. “Don’t bother us with anymore, but take yourselves off. And look here; I don’t allow gypsies to settle or squat, or whatever you call it, upon my land.”
The woman tied the coins she had received in the corner of her apron with deliberate composure, then, dropping a curtsey, followed the man, who had already struck into the thick undergrowth.
“How delightful!” exclaimed Annie Penstone. “Mr. Bradstone, I believe you had them brought here on purpose, just to make your picnic complete.”