"Yes; that she should have said again what she always told me."
"And what was that?"
"That I was going on a long journey."
"Did she always tell you that?"
"Always, from the very first."
"Perhaps she tells every one so," I suggested.
"No, for I used to ask, and very particularly, as to that."
Why, I wondered, had she been so curious about long journeys? I had never known travel to absorb her thoughts. Why had she inquired, and always so very particularly, as she confessed, about that single item of gypsy prophecy, and the very one which would seem least likely to be verified? Never in my knowledge of Letitia's lifetime had there been any other promise than that of the fortune-teller that she would ever wander from Grassy Ford. I might have asked her, but she seemed silent and depressed as we drove homeward, which was due, I fancied, to the gypsy's rude alarm. For some days after she continued to remark how strangely that repetition of the old augury had sounded in her ears, and smiling at it, she confessed how in former years she had laid more stress upon it, and had even planned what her gowns would be.
"Did you guess where you were going?" I ventured to inquire.
"Well, I rather hoped—"