ca was frankly puzzled.

"Yes. She showed me how to do it. You just sit with the ball in front
of you and look into it for a long time and don't think of anything
else and all of a sudden you see pictures; that's what aunt said."

"What kind of pictures?" Joseph demanded.

"Pictures of what's going to happen. You see just what you're going to
do when you grow up."

"I don't believe that nonsense," declared Rebecca, with an emphatic
shake of her dark curls. "Father says it's all foolishness--like
believing what a gypsy fortune-teller promises you."

"Well, let's try it, anyhow," suggested Rachel. "It won't do any harm
and it'll give us something to do till the rain's over and we can go
out and play again."

The crystal ball placed upon the table, the five dark and the one
flaxen head bent over it eagerly. "But we'll never see anything this
way," corrected Matilda. "It's Rebecca's party, so let her have the
ball first. No one else must look or say a single word till she's seen
her picture."

Cheeks flushed with excitement, shining dark eyes fastened upon the
crystal, Rebecca sat motionless, scarcely daring to breathe as she
waited for the picture of her future to appear in the glass. The
others clustered about her, expectant and silent. At last she shook
her head and pushed the ball aside. "I can't see a single thing," she
complained.

"But I want to try it," declared Jacob, reaching for the crystal. "Now
all keep quiet and maybe I'll see something, even if Becky couldn't."

Again patient waiting until Jacob got up in disgust. "It's a silly
game," he jeered. "Maybe your aunt could see things in an old glass
ball, but nobody else can."

"It's more fun just playing 'pretend'," declared his sister Rachel.
"Let's do it." She flung herself upon an old fur rug near the window,
pulling Benjamin down beside her. "We'll just sit in a circle and
pretend we've looked in the glass ball and it told us just what we
were going to do when we grow up. I want to tell my fortune first,"
she ended importantly.

"That's a silly girl game," objected Jacob; but, tired of romping, he,
too, threw himself upon the rug and waited with the rest of the circle
for Rachel to disclose her future.

"When I'm grown up," began Rachel very slowly, her eyes fixed on the
trees beyond the window, dripping with rain, "I'm going to be very
beautiful like Miss Franks in New York used to be, and go to parties
and balls every single night and have a