This suggestion cheered away the left-behindish feeling that they all experienced as they watched that distant pear-shaped object floating in the sky. As they walked along the road it was impossible to keep their eyes and thoughts from following the balloon, so that conversation was desultory, until Mollie thought she saw a bad wobble and gave a little scream.
"You really need not be so nervous," Prue said, catching her by the arm. "Mr. Ferguson has been up hundreds of times, he won't let Hugh down. Bridget read Hugh's fortune in his tea-cup last night and says he is going to die when he is eighty-three-and-a-half; I can't think why she has begun to hear his death-watch tick already. And besides—don't you believe in Fate? If it is your fate to fall from a balloon and be killed, you'll be killed that way; there's no use trying not to be."
"You couldn't be if you never went up in a balloon," said Mollie.
"Then it wouldn't be your fate," Prudence answered.
Mollie could not think of a suitable reply at the moment and was silent.
"That's not all," Grizzel added. "Hugh has got my green diamond with him for luck. Bridget says that my diamond is the Luck of the Campbells, and will always bring good luck to the person that wears it, like a four-leaved shamrock. So I made Hugh take it."
This remark reminded the others of the diamond-mine, and Dick, Jerry, and Mollie became eager for news of that adventure. It had turned out fairly well; they had not as yet made a fortune, but on the strength of their prospects Mr. Fraser had encouraged Papa to send Mamma and Baby for a trip home, and to add several comforts to the household, one of which was the broad veranda at the back of the house, in which Mollie had found herself that morning.
"We live in it by day, and some of us sleep in it by night," Prue said.
"You shall sleep in a hammock to-night, Mollie."
After a feast of cocoa and cream-cakes at Bauermann's they got home just in time for a dinner of twice-laid and Uncle Tom's pudding, to which even Dick and Jerry could not do justice.
"It's my favourite dinner, too," sighed Prudence. "It's a strange thing that one day you get too much and another day too little. To-morrow there will be no Bauermann's and most likely dinner will be boiled mutton and tapioca pudding."