‘Your dook is but a shabby expounder of riddles if he cannot tell us why the lady should be found insensible and washing about the ocean in a little bit of an open boat,’ said Mr. Wedmold. ‘Can’t the dook make a guess?’
‘You forget, Mr. Wedmold, that fortune-telling means reading the future, not the past,’ said Mrs. Webber.
‘And that is right, my beautiful lady,’ cried the gipsy; ‘but I have told the sorrowful lady her past too, and by-and-bye the dook may tell me what her name is and where her ’ome is, and how many childer she has; and if I enable her to return to her friends, I hope,’ said she, sinking her knees in a curtsey, ‘that the poor gipsy woman will be remembered.’
Captain Ladmore, who had been looking on and listening all this while, stalked away from the crowd of us to the rail, and remained there, gazing seawards.
‘And shall I tell you your fortune, my sweet young lady?’ exclaimed the gipsy, addressing Alice Lee. ‘Give me your poor thin hand, and though you cross mine with the littlest bit you have, you shall have your fortune as truly told as though you gave me gold.’
‘My daughter does not require her fortune told,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee, jumping up with an air of mingled consternation and excitement, and planting herself between the gipsy and Alice.
‘I think we have had about enough of her for one watch,’ exclaimed Mr. Harris, in his sourest voice. ‘Suppose you go forward now.’
‘Let me tell you your fortune, my pretty gentleman,’ exclaimed the gipsy; ‘you are an officer of the ship, and I will tell you your fortune for nothing.’
‘Get along forward to your quarters,’ said Mr. Harris. ‘When I want lies told about me I’ll get ’em from somebody who’ll have sense enough to fit my tiptop wishes. What can ye tell me? That after this voyage I’m going to marry a German princess and be voted ten thousand a year by the British House of Commons? You’d want sixpence to tell me that lie, and there’s never a man for’ards that wouldn’t spin me fifty better yarns about my prospects for a single tot of grog. So away with you to your quarters,’ and he made as though he would drive her; whereupon, dropping curtsies to me, to Mrs. Webber, and to one or two others, the gipsy walked forward with a face rendered extraordinary by the wild grin on her lips and the scowl upon her brow like a visible shadow there, sharpening and brightening the fiery glancings of her eyes.
The crowds of emigrants on the two ladders melted away, the mob of passengers broke up, but Mrs. Webber remained.