“Dirty Gipsy woman! She’s as clean as any queen; and for majesty and breed—oh, I wish you could have seen her. A thoroughbred filly three years old is more graceful than any woman that ever stepped. You can’t expect two legs to go as well as four, you know. But Zinka—well, to see Sally walk after that! And Sally ain’t clumsy in her paces, neither. But what do you think she said? When we had told her all about it, she shut her great eyes for a minute, and her lashes came down to the brown roses on her cheeks, and then she whispered—
“‘I can see a great ship coming over the sea, no smoke to it, only white white sails. And in the front of it I can see a beautiful young woman, looking towards England with tears in her eyes. The ship is sailing fast, but her heart is flying faster; and she never looks back, and answers no one, only to ask how much longer it will be.’
“‘And how much longer will it be?’ we both asked her, because it was the very thing that you would want to know.
“‘I cannot say, perhaps three, four weeks. The sun is very hot, and there is a black cloud before them. Perhaps it will swallow them up; I cannot tell. No there is a great bird with long white wings; it will take them through the cloud, and they will be safe. There, it is all sliding from me, like a mist! But I can see her eyes still, and they are full of tears and smiles.’
“Not another word could we get out of her, Kit. There were tears on her own cheeks, when she opened her eyes, and she did not know a single word she had been saying.”
“I wish you had asked her where the ship was to land, and what was the name of it, and how she came there, and whether it would be any good for me to go to meet it, and who it was the lady was thinking of all the while, and how long the storm that was before them was to last, and whether the people on board—”
“Come, Kit, that is all the thanks we get. Major, do you hear him? No, the chap is fast asleep. Between you and me, Kit, he has had a drop too much. But a man in a small way doesn’t win five hundred, every day of his life, you know. By-the-way, I heard that Downy was hard hit again. But Pots took my tip, and has pocketed a thousand. Why, you never congratulated me, my boy. I shall throw up the book now, and invest it in my place. But we must be off, or Sally will blow up. Such a spread! You had better come. Cinny walks into the dining-room, and drinks a bottle of champagne, and there will be some rattling good chaps there.”
“There may be a thousand, Sam; but none better than yourself. I congratulate and thank you, Sam, with all my heart. Few fellows would have thought of a friend at such a time. But excuse me; I can’t come to-night, indeed I can’t. I want to think of this all by myself. You say that this beautiful queen is never wrong. And what a heart she must have, what a fine heart, Sam! I should like to have seen the tears on her lovely cheeks.”
“Oh, I say! Come, come, Kit. But she has never been known to be wrong, my dear fellow. All the tribe call her—well, I can’t pronounce the name, but it means something like ‘the infallible divine.’ And she does it all so simply! There is no humbug about her. Come along, Major; why, you must be starved.”
I was partly ashamed of my own superstition; yet I could not help saying to myself—“They believe it; and they are ten times cleverer than I shall ever be.”