THE silence was broken a little later by merry voices on the stairway. For several nights the girls had been in May Nell’s room. Billy knew “things were doing” there by the sounds; the tap, tap of the hammer, added to much and . Now May Nell caught him by the hand and pulled him across the hall. A strange like burning spice, yet not familiar, met them at the door. And inside, the dark hangings full of shadows gave the room a foreign air.  
The Queen of Sheba in gypsy dress, and her harum-scarum train buzzing with gossip and , flocked in. Bess looked magnificent in a mass of draperies that included every Oriental thing to be found in several families.
 
“Jiminy whiz! Your royal dazzles me!” Billy chaffed.
 
“I’m the Royal Egyptian Fortune !” Bess announced, in a deep voice. “This is my desert tent. I shall reveal the past, present, and future to those only whom my favor shall designate. Slaves, the lamps!”
 
Clarence and , much wrapped in white about the head, but with bare little white arms and bare little brown legs, came in solemnly and placed some red lanterns on the table. Bess posed in a chair decorated for the occasion, arranged her draperies, pulled nearer the “incense lamp,” which was her father’s Turkish cigar , laid out her cards, and over them in grave silence.
 
Her absorption hypnotized the others to wondering stillness. In a moment her attitude and had transported them to the mysterious East, and put upon them the spell of ancient .
 
At last she looked up and a startling finger at May Nell. “Mary Ellen Smith, my familiars, who guard the portals of futurity, declare that you shall be the first honored. , depart! Slaves, guard the door!”
 
Jean and the twins, Charley, George and some others, down the stairs; while Clarence and Harry stood , with wooden scymitars , one on each side of the door.
 
Billy hesitated a minute. The dim room, the wicked-looking red lights, Bess so stern and mysterious,—this might frighten the little girl. He ought to wait.
 
“Avaunt, hesitating noddy! The angel child is quite safe!” Bess waved an arm, partly bare and brown in spots.
 
“Yes, go away, Billy; I’m not afraid.” May Nell laughed happily. Her quick mind was delighted with the masquerading.
 
Yet it was a very quiet little child that crept down to the others a few minutes later; when asked of her fortune she burst into tears.
 
Mrs. Bennett came in and tried to learn the trouble; but it was some time before May Nell could be induced to tell.
 
“She said, the Queen of Sheba did, that I’d be in danger, and some one would save me. And I’d have a s’prise, and a hus—husband, and fi-five c-chil— children!” She again and hid her face on Mrs. Bennett’s shoulder.
 
“Golly! There’s nothing skewgee about that fortune,” Billy commented, encouragingly.
 
“Oh, yes; yes, there is, Billy.” May Nell lifted a teary face. “Five children! If it had been two, or perhaps I could possibly bring up three; but f-five, o-o-oh!” she wailed again, heedless of the laughter around her.
 
Several others were summoned and returned with reports. At last two high-pitched little voices called in concert down the[160] stair: “The Royal Seeress will the veil of futurity for William Bennett.”
 
“That’s you, papa,” Clarence piped, as an anxious post warning.
 
Artful Bess! Billy had treated it all as a huge joke; but now May Nell’s depression, the sound of his right name, the dim room with its shadows and half-suffocating odors,—all to send a sober Billy into the circle of light that came from the two lamps gleaming on either side of dark Bess like angry eyes.
 
A few minutes later the entire Egyptian fortune-telling came down stairs at Billy’s heels. The was a riot of fun, and no one noticed that Billy said nothing about the revelations of destiny made to him; though later Jean recalled that in the zig-zag journey around the park that was Billy’s evening exercise, he very little to the chatterers with him, even forgot to “jolly.”
 
That night when Mrs. Bennett went into the Fo’castle there was an unusual note in Billy’s voice.
 
“Stop and chin with me just a little, won’t you, marmsey?”
 
“And what’s the ‘chinning’ to be about?” she questioned, sitting on the bedside; “the fortune?”
 
Billy looked at her wonderingly for an instant. “You guess everything that troubles a fellow, don’t you? How do you do it?” He sighed deeply.
 
“Was it as bad as that?” She smiled, and smoothed back the thick, tumbled hair.
 
“Worse! She said soon I’d have to be very brave—that ain’t bad—but I’m goin’ to be—to be a minister—a preacher!” The last word came with a woe-begone that made his mother laugh.
 
“Why do you think that’s so dreadful?”
 
“O mother,” he began, excitedly, and stopped. Only lately had he called her “mother” in his serious moments, and the name gave her pain as well as pleasure, for it was one more announcement of the coming man.
 
“Mother,” he resumed, “I know I must freeze to some sort of business, and that soon, too. But a preacher—why, he can’t be like anybody. He never has any fun.”
 
“Do you think fun the first business of the world?”
 
“Oh, no,” he sighed; “I suppose duty is the first business; but duty is such a narrow, knock-you-down little word.” His voice ............