“It looks as though you were telling fortunes,” remarked Sahwah, watching the petals alternately whirl and sink, “like tea leaves, you know.”

Hinpoha brightened at once and animation came back into her face.  Better than anything else under the sun, Hinpoha loved to tell fortunes.

“Do you want me to tell yours, Sahwah?” she asked eagerly.

Sahwah agreed amiably; she did not care two straws about fortune-telling herself, but she knew Hinpoha’s hobby and willingly submitted to countless “readings” of her future, in various ways, by the ardent amateur seeress.

Hinpoha shook the bottle energetically, and then watched intently as the petals gradually ceased whirling and came to rest at the bottom of the bottle.

“There is a stranger coming into your life,” she began impressively, “awfully thin, and light.”

“Like the syrup we had on our pancakes in the station this morning,” murmured Migwan.

Sahwah and Gladys giggled; Hinpoha frowned.  “All right, if you’re going to laugh at me,” she began.

“Go on, we’ll be good,” said Migwan hastily.

“Tell us some more about the light-haired stranger.  Please tell us when he is coming into her life, so we can be there to see.”

“He has already come,” announced Hinpoha, after thoughtfully squinting into the bottle.

“News to me,” laughed Sahwah, amused at the seriousness with which Hinpoha delivered her revelations.  “Oh, I know who it is,” she continued, giggling.  “It’s the brakeman.  He was a Swede, with the yellowest hair you ever saw.  He was awfully skinny, too.  He was very polite, and told me everything he knew, and then went away to find out some more.”

Migwan and Gladys shouted; Hinpoha pouted and snatched up the bottle, shaking it with offended vigor, setting the petals whirling madly and breaking up the “cast” of Sahwah’s fortune.

“There was another man, too,” she announced, with a don’t-you-wish-you’d-waited air, “but I won’t tell you about him now.  He was awfully queer, too; he was there twice, and once he was dark and once he was light!”

“How do you know it was the same one?” inquired Gladys curiously.

“Because it was,” replied Hinpoha knowingly.

“Maybe he faded,” suggested Sahwah, giggling again.

“No, he didn’t,” replied Hinpoha mysteriously, “because he was light first and dark afterward!”

Hinpoha’s voice rang out like an oracle, and the judicial-looking man in the seat ahead of them turned around and surveyed the four with a smile of amusement on his face.

“That man’s laughing at us,” said Sahwah, feeling terribly foolish.  “Quit telling fortunes, Hinpoha.  It’s all nonsense, anyhow.”

“Maybe you think it’s nonsense,” returned Hinpoha in an offended tone, “but they do come true, lots of times.  Do you remember, Gladys, the time I told you you were going to get a letter from a distance, and you got one from France the very next day?”