"Pictures of what's going to happen. You see just what you're going to do when you grow up."
"I don't believe that nonsense," declared Rebecca, with an emphatic shake of her dark curls. "Father says it's all foolishness—like believing what a gypsy fortune-teller promises you."
"Well, let's try it, anyhow," suggested Rachel. "It won't do any harm and it'll give us something to do till the rain's over and we can go out and play again."
The crystal ball placed upon the table, the five dark and the one flaxen head bent over it eagerly. "But we'll never see anything this way," corrected Matilda. "It's Rebecca's party, so let her have the ball first. No one else must look or say a single word till she's seen her picture."
Cheeks flushed with excitement, shining dark eyes fastened upon the crystal, Rebecca sat motionless, scarcely daring to breathe as she waited for the picture of her future to appear in the glass. The others clustered about her, expectant and silent. At last she shook her head and pushed the ball aside. "I can't see a single thing," she complained.
"But I want to try it," declared Jacob, reaching for the crystal. "Now all keep quiet and maybe I'll see something, even if Becky couldn't."
Again patient waiting until Jacob got up in disgust. "It's a silly game," he jeered. "Maybe your aunt could see things in an old glass ball, but nobody else can."
"It's more fun just playing 'pretend'," declared his sister Rachel. "Let's do it." She flung herself upon an old fur rug near the window, pulling Benjamin down beside her. "We'll just sit in a circle and pretend we've looked in the glass ball and it told us just what we were going to do when we grow up. I want to tell my fortune first," she ended importantly.
"That's a silly girl game," objected Jacob; but, tired of romping, he, too, threw himself upon the rug and waited with the rest of the circle for Rachel to disclose her future.
"When I'm grown up," began Rachel very slowly, her eyes fixed on the trees beyond the window, dripping with rain, "I'm going to be very beautiful like Miss Franks in New York used to be, and go to parties and balls every single night and have all the officers in the army writing poetry about me and making toasts for me, just as she did. And I'll always wear pink silk," she concluded, with a glance at her rosy ruffles.