“Twelve o’clock, the good-luck hour,” a woman’s voice responded. “I see good fortune in store for the young gentleman. Let the Gypsy Queen read your fate. Cross Zecatacas’ palm with silver. I see good fortune for the young gentleman.”
“Get out, you faker,” exclaimed Lafe.
“She’s all right,” interrupted Bud. “She’s the Gypsy Queen. She’s Queen Zecatacas, and she made the coffee for us.”
“Well, it’s no good anyway,” retorted Lafe. “And I reckon we’ve had enough visitors for one day.”
The old woman seemed not to hear the words. She was looking beyond Pennington and into the brilliantly lighted airship house, where, in the glare of the torches and lanterns, the fragile and graceful frame of the aeroplane had at last assumed shape.
“Beat it,” added Lafe authoritatively, “and don’t bother us any more. We’re busy.”
The aged gypsy did not take her eyes from the skeleton of the airship. To Bud, the shadowed fortune teller seemed like a person in a trance. Without replying to Lafe or moving, she spoke, suddenly, in a strange tongue, to the man with her. He answered angrily in the same language. She stretched forth a bare, lean arm and pointing toward the aeroplane spoke again. The man replied, more at length this time, and as if in explanation.
“She wants to know what it’s all about,” volunteered one of the carpenters who was nearest the apparently transfixed woman.
The man laughed with a sort of sneer.