f
innocence were all there. In her enthusiasm she nearly gave her a
sprained ankle which had belonged to her sister. Still shaking her head
over her mistake, she drew Flora's latest portrait carefully from its
place in the album, and putting on her hat and jacket went round to make
a call in Peter Street.

By the time Flora returned home Mrs. Dowson appeared to have forgotten
the arrangement made the night before, and, being reminded by her
daughter, questioned whether any good could come of attempts to peer into
the future. Mr. Dowson was still more emphatic, but his objections,
being recognized by both ladies as trouser-pocket ones, carried no
weight. It ended in Flora going off with half a crown in her glove and
an urgent request from her father to make it as difficult as possible for
the sibyl by giving a false name and address.

No name was asked for, however, as Miss Dowson was shown into the untidy
little back room on the first floor, in which the sorceress ate, slept,
and received visitors. She rose from an old rocking-chair as the visitor
entered, and, regarding her with a pair of beady black eyes, bade her sit
down.

"Are you the fortune-teller?" inquired the girl.

"Men call me so," was the reply.

"Yes, but are you?" persisted Miss Dowson, who inherited her father's
fondness for half crowns.

"Yes," said the other, in a more natural voice.

She took the girl's left hand, and pouring a little dark liquid into the
palm gazed at it intently. "Left for the past; right for the future,"
she said, in a deep voice.

She muttered some strange words and bent her head lower over the girl's
hand.

[Illustration: "She muttered some strange words and bent her head lower
over the girl's hand."]

"I see a fair-haired infant," she said, slowly; "I see a little girl of
four racked with the whooping-cough; I see her later, eight she appears
to be. She is in bed with measles."

Miss Dowson stared at her open-mouthed.

"She goes away to the seaside to get strong," continued the sorceress;
"she is paddling; she falls into the water and spoils her frock; her
mother----"

"Never mind about that," interrupted the staring Miss Dowson, hastily.
"I was only eight at the time and mother always was ready with her
hands."

"People on the beach smile," resumed the other. "They

"It don't take much to make some people laugh," said Miss Dowson, with
bitterness.

"At fourteen she and a boy next door but seven bo