“I heard what you said about going to Dalton,” Urania said to Nat, as she tried to hide her embarrassment by fingering her tattered dress, “and I was wondering if you could let me ride in the back of your automobile. I want to go to the big city and it’s—it’s a far walk—isn’t it?”
“It would be a long walk to Dalton,” replied Nat in surprise, “but Dalton isn’t a big city. Besides, I could never help you to run away,” he finished.
“Some boys do,” Urania remarked with a pout. “I know people who run away. They come to Melea to have their fortunes told.”
Nat and Dorothy laughed at this. It seemed queer that persons who would run away would stop long enough to have their fortunes told by a Gypsy.
“And couldn’t I ride in the back of your automobile?” persisted the girl, not willing to let so good a chance slip past her too easily.
“I’m afraid not,” declared Nat. “I wouldn’t help you to run away in the first place, and, in the second, I never take any girls out riding, except my cousin and her friend.”
“Oh, you don’t eh?” sneered Urania. “What about the one with the red hair? Didn’t I see you out with her one day when we were camping in the mountains—near that high-toned school, Glendale or Glenwood or something like that. And didn’t she come to our camp next day to have her fortune told? Oh, she wanted to start out in the world for herself. You would help her, of course, but poor Urania—she must die,” and the girl threw herself down upon the grass and buried her head in the long wet spears.
Dorothy and Nat were too surprised to answer. Surely the girl must refer to Tavia, but Tavia had never ridden out alone with Nat, not even while he was at the automobile assembly near Glenwood. And Tavia could scarcely have gone to the fortune teller’s camp.
“I say I have never taken out any girl without my mother or my cousin being along,” Nat said, sharply, recovering himself.
“Then it was your girl with another fellow,” declared the wily Gypsy, not willing to be caught in an untruth. She arose from the grass and, seeing the telling expression on the faces of her listeners, like all of her cult, she knew she had hit upon a fact of some kind.