“Burra, burra pie, cat’s eye, devil fry,
Singer, dinger, singer dinger, blood!”
the black witch dropped a spoonful of the lead into a bowl of water.
“Here is your fortune,” she said, in a sing-song voice to the nearest ghost.
“The lead has taken the shape of a letter. It brings news to you. It comes from over the water on a ship. The letter is about something round——”
“Money is round,” put in a tall ghost, standing near. “So are rings and necklaces——”
“There is trouble ahead,” went on the witch. “There is trouble before the letter ever reaches land.”
The ghost who was listening moved away quickly.
“Of course, it was just a coincidence,” she said to herself, “but I wonder who the person was who said that about rings and necklaces. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I wish I had never taken that box in charge.”
In another part of the room a red witch was engaged in launching little fortune sail boats, made of English walnuts, on a troubled sea in a tub.
There were four other witches about the attic telling fortunes with cards and in other ways, two gray ones, a white one, and a green one, and there was an enormous gray cat with electric eyes and a tail four feet long that curled up over its back. At last from behind a curtain came the strains of weird music, and the witches and the gray cat danced a quadrille, the witches riding on their broomsticks in a circle, leaping over the cat as they advanced down the middle and finally ending with a romp when all the ghosts joined in and danced together.