“These ladies are Madame Belotti and her sister,” said Addie, as a sort of introduction.
“But where is the spazinx?” asked Elfie, looking greatly disappointed.
“I am de sphinx, young lady,” said one of the women.
“But you’ve got legs and arms. Spazinxes don’t have any thing but heads an’ a big lace collar. I did see one in a picture.”
“I don’t have any ding but a head ven I is professional,” said the woman, affably, but glancing around hurriedly as if she feared a possible interruption, “but of course I can’t walk widout my legs.”
“But I don’t see how you pull them off and put them on again,” said Elfie, sidling away with some timidity from a creature whose anatomy was so foreign to the established usages of humanity, “and I don’t want my fortune told. I’d rather go back.”
“O, don’t be afraid,” said Madame Belotti, sweetly. “I have nice little girls of my own at home, and here’s my sister; she has lots of pretty dings in her bag. She’ll show dem to you while dese young ladies let me read deir palms.”
Elfie felt less dread of a person who made no pretension to being a sphinx, and was soon examining with great interest a box of trinkets which the woman told her were genuine gypsy-queen adornments, worn at gypsy courts on great occasions.
Meantime Madame Belotti was gazing with mysterious scrutiny upon the lines of Katie’s pretty pink palm and predicting a mosaic of ill and good fortune so nicely blended that Katie felt that her future life, as thus set before her, had little to embitter it.
“Now try mine,” said Lily, “and be sure you put in a trip to Europe, with a winter in Rome and another in Paris.”