"Why," said the graduating class, talking two or three at once, "she can tell you when you were born, how your parents look, what's your given name, and all about your friends, whether they're light or dark complexion, and—"
"Well, there," said Grace, contemptuously, "that's smart! Does anybody want to hear it all over again, when they knew it before? I'd like her to tell something new."
"So she does," cried the girls, with breathless eagerness; "she can foretell things, and they do come to pass, too,—things that make your hair stand on end."
"I wonder!" said timid Lucy Lane, shivering, and looking behind her.
"O, fie! Lucy," said. Grace, patronizingly; "don't you be a bit afraid, dear; it's all a sham. I can foretell as well as Mrs. Gypsy. I'll foretell what we're going to have for dinner—a dog in a blanket."
"There, now," laughed Diademia; "I've heard of eating roasted horses, but I didn't know it ever came to cats and dogs."
Grace explained that a dog in a blanket was a roly-poly pudding.
"But about this gypsy," continued Di; "anybody'd think, to hear you,
Grace Clifford, that you supposed we believed in her."
At this speech the girls all declared, by gestures and exclamations, that nothing could be more absurd than to suppose that they had any faith in such nonsense. What did they care about it? Only it was so queer! True, they knew of girls who had been to see this strange being,—young ladies who never told a lie in their lives,—and these young ladies all "deposed" and said that the gypsy was a perfect wonder!
Grace listened with curling lip to the strange stories which the princesses narrated. There was Panoria Swan,—the proud young lady who, the boys said, had swallowed a whalebone and couldn't stoop,—even Panoria Swan sailed down in all her majesty to this gypsy, who sent her home so terribly frightened that she ran every step of the way, and forgot to scowl for six hours. Then there was the large girl with the geographical name, Missouri Arkansas Smith, who had found a pot of gold, or was going to; and a man who had had a splendid future foretold, which had come to pass; that is to say, all that had happened beforehand had come to pass, every speck of it.