"It's Dick, I guess," said the girl who had entered just ahead of Elaine, plunging into conversation without waiting for an introduction. "He's got on gloves, wet chamois-skin gloves, but who would imagine that it would feel so ghastly? Don't you love to have your blood run cold?" Fortunately Elaine was spared the necessity of answering that question by encountering Peggy, who gave both arrivals a rapturous squeeze and bore them off to her room to remove their wraps.
The Raymond living-room had been transformed in honor of Peggy's party. Jack-o'-lanterns grinned from the mantel and the book-cases. A tub of water, Elaine noticed with disapproval, occupied the centre of the room. Hung over the grate was an old iron kettle, in whose depths something silvery bubbled responsive to the heat below. The chairs set back against the wall were filled with laughing girls; for, in spite of Peggy's repeated warnings that Elaine was not to be late, she was the last arrival.
"We'll start with the lead, that's boiling so nicely, and perhaps lead boils away, just as water does." Peggy brought out a long-handled tin spoon, and a basin filled with water. "Come, Ruth," she commanded.
"O, let somebody else take her turn first," pleaded Ruth, but half a dozen hands pushed her forward. Cautiously she ladled a little of the melted lead into the water. Hissing it fell to the bottom of the basin, taking shape as it cooled. The girls crowded about to read the augury.
"Ruth!" Peggy's voice was preternaturally solemn. "It's awful, but it looks to me like three balls. Do you suppose you are going to marry a pawn-broker?"
"O, horrors!" cried Ruth, aghast. Milly Weston patted her shoulder comfortingly.
"Don't you believe it. I can see leaves and branches, too. Those three balls are fruit; oranges probably. That means you're going to have an orange ranch in California or Florida, and make lots of money."
The rest of the fortune telling proved equally cheerful. The fantastic shapes assumed by the lead in cooling could be interpreted in a variety of ways. While Priscilla insisted that fate had moulded the lead she let fall into the shape of the horn of plenty, which, of course, would signify prosperity, Peggy was positive that the lead had taken the form of a ship, and signified a voyage, while some of the girls saw a fish in the curved shape, and advanced ingenious theories as to its meaning.
There was no disagreement as to Elaine's fortune. The lead took the form of a violin, and Peggy triumphantly prophesied that her new friend would make a success in music. Elaine smiled with a sense of superiority, as one who has outgrown childish things, but she could not help being glad of the violin, in place of the rolling-pin Peggy had claimed for herself, and which she considered argued skill in the domestic arts. Though Elaine was trying hard to put Peggy's lessons into execution she had not got beyond the point of regarding housework as drudgery.
By the time the supply of lead was exhausted the company was ready for something else. Into the tub filled with water Peggy dropped three apples, which bobbed against one another sociably and then went sailing off in different directions.