.

"Consider how long I have been out of work," I says, "and don't ask me to
put off the journey. I won't fail you, mother. I'll get back by to-morrow
night, if I have to pay my last sixpence for a lift in a cart.

My mother shook her head. "I don't like it, Francis--I don't like it!"
There was no moving her from that view. We argued and argued, until we
were both at a deadlock. It ended in our agreeing to refer the difference
between us to my mother's sister, Mrs. Chance.

While we were trying hard to convince each other, my aunt Chance sat as
dumb as a fish, stirring her tea and thinking her own thoughts. When we
made our appeal to her, she seemed as it were to wake up. "Ye baith refer
it to my puir judgment?" she says, in her broad Scotch. We both answered
Yes. Upon that my aunt Chance first cleared the tea-table, and then pulled
out from the pocket of her gown a pack of cards.

Don't run away, if you please, with the notion that this was done lightly,
with a view to amuse my mother and me. My aunt Chance seriously believed
that she could look into the future by telling fortunes on the cards. She
did nothing herself without first consulting the cards. She could give no
more serious proof of her interest in my welfare than the proof which she
was offering now. I don't say it profanely; I only mention the fact--the
cards had, in some incomprehensible way, got themselves jumbled up
together with her religious convictions. You meet with people nowadays who
believe in spirits working by way of tables and chairs. On the same
principle (if there _is_ any principle in it) my aunt Chance believed in
Providence working by way of the cards.

"Whether _you_ are right, Francie, or your mither--whether ye will do weel
or ill, the morrow, to go or stay--the cairds will tell it. We are a' in
the hands of Proavidence. The cairds will tell it."

Hearing this, my mother turned her head aside, with something of a sour
look in her face. Her sister's notions about the cards were little better
than flat blasphemy to her mind. But she kept her opinion to herself. My
aunt Chance, to own the truth, had inherited, through her late husband, a
pension of thirty pounds a year. This was an important contribution to our
housekeeping, and we poor relations were bound to treat her with a certain
respect. As for myself, if my poor father never did anything else for me
before he fell into difficulties, he gave me a good education, and raised
me (t