“All right, then,” replied his chum, resolutely. “We’ll go through the performance just like we planned it. I only wanted to make sure you hadn’t backed water, because it wouldn’t be worth while to take the chances unless you felt dead sure there might be something in it.”
“I’m going to do just as you said, Frank, and look like any fellow might when he had a chance to walk around in a gypsy camp. There’s lots of queer things to see; and I want to talk with one or two of those boys, if so be they’ll answer civil questions. But you can bet I don’t touch on that subject once. But, Frank, I’ll use my eyes to beat the band; and if she’s around I’m bound to see her.”
“Well, here we are, close up now; so haul off, and fight shy of the matter. Let’s jabber away like a couple of boys would, that had been sent here on an errand, and wanted to look around, just to see how these ramblers live when they are in camp.”
Lanky, to use his own expression, “buttoned up his lips” right then and there. He could not tell when some member of the gypsy tribe might be lying behind a bush, and overhear what they were saying; and it was the part of discretion to keep a close watch over everything they did from now on.
Suspicious looks greeted their arrival at the camp. Both men and women, even the younger element among the nomads, seemed to question the wisdom of allowing a couple of boys to enter the enclosure where the belongings of the tribe were scattered about.
But Frank stepped up to the first man he met, and there was something so manly about his demeanor that unconsciously, before he had spoken a word, the gypsy smiled.
“I want to see the queen, Esther you call her, I think,” was what Frank said.
“She is not telling fortunes any more,” said the man. “It has brought us more trouble than dollars, and so she has stopped. But they were always true; and sometimes the house-dwellers liked them not on that account.”
“But I don’t want to see her for that,” Frank insisted.
“What would you, then, boy?” demanded the man, a little suspiciously now.