Mrs. Bennett came in and tried to learn the trouble; but it was some time before May Nell could be induced to tell.
“She said, the Queen of Sheba did, that I’d be in danger, and some one would save me. And I’d have a s’prise, and a hus—husband, and fi-five c-chil— children!” She wailed again and hid her face on Mrs. Bennett’s shoulder.
“Golly! There’s nothing skewgee about that fortune,” Billy commented, encouragingly.
“Oh, yes; yes, there is, Billy.” May Nell lifted a teary face. “Five children! If it had been two, or perhaps I could possibly bring up three; but f-five, o-o-oh!” she wailed again, heedless of the laughter around her.
Several others were summoned and returned with remarkable reports. At last two high-pitched little voices called in concert down the stair: “The Royal Seeress will rend the veil of futurity for William Bennett.”
“That’s you, papa,” Clarence piped, as an anxious post warning.
Artful Bess! Billy had treated it all as a huge joke; but now May Nell’s depression, the unfamiliar sound of his right name, the dim room with its shadows and half-suffocating odors,—all conspired to send a sober Billy into the circle of lurid light that came from the two lamps gleaming on either side of dark Bess like angry eyes.
A few minutes later the entire Egyptian fortune-telling outfit came down stairs at Billy’s heels. The hubbub was a riot of fun, and no one noticed that Billy said nothing about the revelations of destiny made to him; though later Jean recalled that in the zig-zag journey around the park that was Billy’s evening exercise, he spoke very little to the chatterers with him, even forgot to “jolly.”
That night when Mrs. Bennett went into the Fo’castle there was an unusual note in Billy’s voice.
“Stop and chin with me just a little, won’t you, marmsey?”