"And who will go in first, then?" asked Bell.
"Humph!" said Joe, "there is a grave question. The decrees of fate must not be tampered with, and the wrong one going in first might send those 'stars' on which the witch depends, into most alarming collision."
"Easily arranged," said Leslie, drawing a handful of coin from his pocket, handing one of the pieces to each of the girls, and retaining one himself. "As fate is the deity to be consulted, let fate take care of her own. The one who happens to hold the piece of oldest date shall take the first chance, and the others will follow according to the same rule. I have settled more than one important question of my life in this manner, and I have an idea that they have been settled quite as satisfactorily as they could have been by any exercise of judgment."
"Eighteen hundred and fifty-two," said Bell, looking at the date on her coin. "Eighteen hundred and fifty-seven," said Joe, paying the same attention to the one she held. And "Eighteen hundred and sixty-one—only last year!" said Leslie, jingling the coins in his hand and then dropping them back into his pocket,—from which (par parenthese) they were so soon and so effectually to disappear, with all others of their kind, in the turning of exchanges against us and the general derangement of the currency of the country.
"You are first, Bell, you see!" said Joe, "and I hope you will be able to take the fiery edge off the teeth of the dragon before I get in to him."
"And I am the last, you perceive!" said Leslie. "The last, as I always have been where women were concerned—too late, and of course unsuccessful."
There may have been no positive reason for the slight flush which crossed the face of Josephine Harris at that moment, or for the conscious look of pleasure that danced for an instant in her eyes; and yet there may have been a thought of true happiness at the assurance which the last words of Leslie conveyed, that he was an unmarried man and had been, so far, near enough heart-whole for all practical purposes. If the latter should even have been true, she need not have flushed a second time at recognizing the feeling in herself; for most certainly those apparently light words of Tom Leslie had been, so to speak, shot at her, with a determined intention of feeling ground to be afterwards trodden.
"Madame is waiting your pleasure," said the negro girl, who had remained standing near the curtain all this while, but too far distant to catch many of the words passing between the three visitors, which had all been uttered in a low tone.
"Ah, yes, we have kept her waiting too long, perhaps," said Leslie, "and who knows but the fates may be the more unkind to us for the neglect of their priestess." He was really not very well at his ease, but somewhat anxious to appear so, as all very bashful people can fully understand, when they remember the efforts they have sometimes made to appear the most impudent men in creation. Tom Leslie was not in the slightest degree bashful, and so the comparison fails in that regard; but he was more than a little nervous at the certainty which he felt of once more meeting the "red woman," and for that reason he wished to seem the man with no nerves whatever.
"It is my turn—I will go in," said Bell Crawford, rising from her chair and following the negro attendant within the curtain, which only parted a little to admit her and then swept down again to the floor, giving no glimpse to the two outsiders of what might be within.