"That's right—I don't laugh much either—I'm too dignified, you know; but somehow I make other people laugh. There's Archie now, for everlasting laughing; but Minnette—do you know I never saw her laugh yet—that is, really laugh. She smiles sometimes; not a pleasant smile either, but a scornful smile like. I say, Minnette," she added, raising her voice, "what is the reason you never laugh?"
"None of your business," rudely replied Minnette.
"The Lord never intended her face for a smiling one," said Miss Hagar, breaking in, suddenly. "And you, you poor little wild eaglet, who, a moment ago, boasted you had never wept, you shall yet shed tears of blood. The bird has its eyes put out with red-hot iron before it can be made to sing sweetly; and so you, too, poor bird, must be blinded, even though you should flutter and beat yourself to death, trying to break through the bars of your cage."
"Humph! I'd like to see them trying to put my eyes out," said Gipsy. "I guess I'd make them sing, and on the wrong side of their mouths, too—at least, I think I should!"
"Oh, Miss Hagar, tell us our fortunes—you haven't done so this long time," exclaimed Archie, jumping up. "Here is Gipsy wants to know hers, and Celeste's, too; and as for me, I know the future must have something splendid in store for so clever a fellow, and I'm anxious to know it beforehand."
"Don't be too anxious," said Miss Hagar, fixing her gloomy eyes prophetically on his eager, happy face; "troubles are soon enough when they come, without wishing to forestall them."
"Why, Miss Hagar, you don't mean to say I'm to have troubles?" cried Archie, laughing. "If they do come, I'll laugh in their face, and cry, 'Never surrender.' I don't believe, though, my troubles will be very heavy."
"Yes, the heaviest troubles that man can ever know shall be thine," said the oracle, in her deep, gloomy voice. "The day will come when despair, instead of laughter, will fill your beaming eyes; when the smile shall have left your lip, and the hue of health will give place to the dusky glow of the grave. Yes, the day will come when the wrong you may not quell shall cling to you like a garment of flame, crushing and overwhelming you and all you love, in its fiery, burning shame. The day will come when one for whom you would give your life shall desert you for your deadliest enemy, and leave you to despair and woe. Such is the fate I have read in the stars for you."
"La! Archie, what a nice time you're going to have," said the incorrigible Gipsy, breaking the impressive silence that followed the sibyl's words—"when all that comes to pass! It will be as good as a play to you."
"Miss Hagar must have sat up all last night getting that pretty speech by heart," said Minnette, fixing her mocking black eyes on the face of the spinster. "How well she repeated it! She'd make her fortune on the stage as a tragedy queen."