Jess smiled. “She seemed to know something about you, too, Laura—that Gypsy queen. She knew you had a negro mammy at home.”
“I don’t know how she guessed that,” admitted Laura. “But I believe all that fortune telling is foolishness. If she came to the house and told Mammy Jinny half what she did us, Mammy would be scared to death. We had a good laugh on the dear old thing yesterday. She’s had a cold for several days and mother insisted upon calling Dr. Agnew in to see her. You know how Nellie’s father is—always joking and the like; and he enjoys puzzling Mammy Jinny. So when he had examined her he said:
“‘Mammy, the trouble is in your thorax, larynx and epiglottis.’
“‘Ma soul an’ body, Doctor!’ exclaimed Mammy, turning gray. ‘An’ I only t’ought I had a so’ t’roat.’”
“But Mammy does like to use long words herself,” chuckled Jess. “She will remember those words and spring them on you some time. Remember when her nephew had the rheumatism?”
“Of course,” Laura replied. “We asked her if it was the inflammatory kind and she said:
“‘Sho’ it’s exclamatory rheumatism. He yells all de time.’”
“But I do wonder,” said Jess, again, “if the Gypsies caught that girl. She must have wanted badly to get away from them to have run the risk of being chased by a bloodhound.”
“And she was smart, too,” Laura agreed. “Running on that wall and wading in the stream threw the dog off the scent.”
“If one of us had done such a thing as that when the water was so cold we would have got our ‘never-get-over,’” declared Jess.