there is a man there who has taken a house a short distance from the village, on the road to Kent House. It seems he keeps to himself too much to please the village. He says he has been ill, and I'm sure has a right to a mite of peace if he wants it. It's only the village that's talking. Those higher up must know things are what they should be, since they don't bother him."

[112]

Frieda was scarcely listening. Mrs. Huggins' news was often uninteresting in itself. It was only that she so much enjoyed repeating it.

She had already finished her second cup of tea and was looking down at the collection of tea leaves in the bottom of her cup.

"Suppose you tell my fortune," she suggested rather shyly. For some time past she had been thinking of just this. "Didn't you say you sometimes told the fortunes of the boys and girls in Granchester, and that a great many things you predict come true?"

The old country woman looked at Frieda sharply.

"I tell the fortunes, child, of boys and girls whose grandfathers and grandmothers I once knew. That isn't difficult fortune telling. I[113] know certain tricks in the faces, I remember what their own people thought and did long before their day. Like father, like son; or maybe like mother, like son; and like father, like daughter. But you—" The old woman shook her head. "I know nothing about you, child; or your country, or your people, or what you have made of life for yourself with that pretty face of yours."

[113]

Still Frieda held out her tea cup.

"Oh, well; just let the tea leaves show you a little," she pleaded, in the spoiled fashion by which Frieda usually accomplished her purpose.

Still the old peasant continued to look, not at the tea leaves but at her young companion. Perhaps she saw something with her fine, tired old eyes, that were too dim to read print, which even Frieda's own family did not see.

"You have had too many of the things you wish without ever having to work for them, or to wait, little lady," she repeated slowly. Then she glanced down into the extended tea cup. "I think I see that you will have to lose something before you find out that you care for it. I also see a long journey, some clouds and at last a rainbow."[114]

[114]

 Prev. P 53/116 next