“Well, never mind,” said Cora briskly, “if you’re sure you’re all right now. Perhaps you’d better have a drink of water. Jack, suppose you go to the car and get one of the drinking cups.”
Jack started promptly to obey, but the girl objected so strongly that he stopped and stood irresolute.
“No, no,” she said, “please not. Only leetle deezy, but all right now,” she continued, dropping into the slipshod gypsy manner of speaking. “Let me tell pretty ladies’ fortunes.”
But just then one of the gypsy men, who had been watching the group sharply, stepped up to the girl and spoke to her roughly in a jargon that the girls could not understand. It was evidently a command, for the gypsy girl turned instantly and went away, disappearing into one of the vans, while the man, after a scowl that included all the party, sauntered away and dropped on the grass beside some of his comrades.
“Well, what do you think of that?” demanded Belle in amazement.
“Just when she had a husband picked out for each of you, too,” chaffed Paul. “But cheer up, girls. We’re here yet. Count on us to the last breath. You can’t lose us.”
“No such luck,” retorted Bess. “But what on earth made that man act that way?”
“It isn’t like gypsies to let good money get away from them,” said Jack, “and they must have seen from our open countenances that we were easy marks and ready to cough up.”
“Jack,” said Walter severely, “please pass up that line of chatter—I mean, please refrain from such vulgar slang. In my unregenerate days I could have stood for it—I mean, endured it—but since I have become refined it hits me on the raw—I mean, it affects me painfully.”
“Oh, stop your nonsense, you boys,” chided Cora. “Can’t you see I’m trying to think?”