“Wanza,” I cried, with swift cajolery, “washed or unwashed your hair is wonderful. It is the color of corn silk, and your eyes are surely blue as the cornflowers. Will you forgive my rudeness when last we met?”
She smiled ever so slightly and the heaviness left her face.
“How is business?” I asked.
“I’ve sold one whisk broom, five spools of darning cotton, a pair of cotton socks, and three strings of blue glass beads, to-day,” she said succinctly.
“Glass beads are the mode, then? It is shocking how out of touch I am with the world of fashion beyond Cedar Dale.” I smiled across at the flushed face. “Now who among the rancher’s wives, I wonder, could have had the temerity to pay the price of three strings of blue glass beads.”
Wanza drew her paddle from the water, giving her head a backward toss. “And it isn’t to ranchers’ wives or town folks I’ve been selling the beads. It’s to the gipsies at the gipsy encampment beyond the village.” Of a sudden her face crumpled with an expression of sly reflection. “A gipsy woman told my fortune too, Mr. Dale; oh, a great fortune she told me!”
“What did she tell you, child?” I asked, anxious to appear friendly and interested. “It must have been something exceptionally good, since you are so vastly pleased.”
Her light brows came together. She shook her head until her hair spun out riotously like fine zigzag flames about her damask cheeks. “It was not a bit good. It was as bad as bad could be. Hm! It made me shiver, Mr. Dale. She said she saw,” Wanza lowered her voice and glanced apprehensively over her shoulder at the tree shadows, “she said she saw blood on my hands.”
In spite of myself I felt myself grow cold, sitting there with the warm sun on my back. And I cried out angrily: “Have you no better sense than to listen to a pack of foolish lies from the tongue of a vagabond gipsy? I am surprised at you, Wanza. Surprised—yes, and ashamed of you!”
I dipped my paddle into the water and swung my canoe about.