"It was nearly ten when I came out of the house," Grace replied, placated by the Little Captain's tactful changing of the subject. "Can't you all stay to lunch? Then we can make a good long day of it."
The girls took a walk about town before lunch, just to "be sure of an appetite," as Amy said. During the tramp they met Roy Anderson, an old boy friend.
"Are you doing anything particular this afternoon?" he wanted to know, and upon the girls replying in the negative, asked if he might bring some of the other boys around. "We have made a discovery!" he shouted after them. "We'll tell you about it when we see you."
And so, the noon meal over, the girls strolled out on the lawn again and waited eagerly for what the boys might have to tell them.
They had not long to wait—in fact they had barely had time to settle themselves in the comfortable chairs, when along the road came—not the boys, but a ragged, bent, old woman, leaning heavily on a twisted stick for support. Instead of going straight on, as the girls had expected she would do, the old woman turned in at the drive and made straight for them.
"What shall we do? Shall we go in the house?" whispered Grace to Betty. "I don't like her looks very much, do you?"
"She isn't particularly beautiful," Betty telegraphed back. "But she can't possibly do us any harm. Let's wait and see what she has to say."
As the old hag drew nearer, the girls instinctively shrank back in their chairs. And, indeed, she was not a prepossessing figure. Her head was bound about with an old red handkerchief, tied under the wrinkled chin and framing a face seamed and crisscrossed with a million wrinkles. An old, tattered shawl covered her bent shoulders, and the hand that grasped the knotted stick was claw-like and emaciated. Her eyes were the only part of her that seemed to retain some semblance of youth. They were little and beady and exceedingly keen, so that when she raised them to Betty's young face, that staunch little captain felt that she would almost rather be anywhere else than there beneath the trees with the searching eyes of the old crone fixed upon her.
"What do you want?" Betty gasped, trying to make her voice calm and steady, but with little success.
"I won't hurt you, pretty ladies," said the old woman, divining their repugnance and half-fear and desiring to placate them. "Won't you have your fortunes told? Only twenty-five cents, and I can tell you of your past and as much as you will of your future. Only a quarter, pretty ladies."