“When were you born?”

Marcella told her and, taking a little stick from under her shawl, the gipsy scratched strange signs in the mud.

“You were born under the protection of Virgo,” said the gipsy, and Marcella’s eyes grew round and big.  “You will go by strange paths and take the man you need.  There will be many to hurt you.  Fire and flood shall be your companions; in wounding you will heal, in losing you will gain; your body will be a battle-ground.”

“Oh, but how can you know?” cried Marcella, and suddenly all those stern Rationalists she had read, Huxley and Frazer, Hegel and Kraill, all very bearded and elderly, all very much muddled together, passed before her eyes.  “It seems so silly to think you can see from those scratchy marks what I am going to do in years and years and years.”

But as the gipsy went away, smiling wisely, and asking none of the usual pieces of silver, all the Kelt in Marcella, which believed things had no roots, came rushing to the surface and sent her indoors to write down the gipsy’s prophecy.  Later, with a sense of mischievous amusement she rummaged in the book-room to find one of the Rationalist books.  But they had been sold, most of them.  Professor Kraill’s “Questing Cells” was there and she copied the prophecy into it, on the fly-leaf.

“Talk about a battle-ground!” she said, smiling reflectively.  “Professor Kraill and a gipsy!”

She turned several pages, and once more got the feel of the book, though still much of it was Greek to her.  Then she got down from the window seat, for her aunt was calling her to tea, and she was hungry.

There was an unusual pot of jam on the table.  She looked at it in surprise as she sat down.

“That is some of Mrs. Mactavish’s bramble jelly that she sent up for the funeral; I thought we’d not be needing it just then.  But now I see it’s beginning to get mildewed.  So it’ll need to be eaten before it’s wasted,” said Aunt Janet, peeling off the top layer of furry green mould and handing the pot to Marcella.

“Oh I do love bramble jelly,” she cried, passing it to Jean, who always ate with them in the good old feudal fashion, right at the foot of the long table.  Jean took a small helping and so did Aunt Janet.  After a while Marcella peered into the pot again.

“Shall we finish it up, Aunt?” she asked, and Aunt Janet shrugged her shoulders.

“To-day or to-morrow, what’s the difference?  Do you really like it so much as that?” she added, watching the girl curiously.

“I love it!  Bramble jelly and seed cake!  What do you think, Aunt?  When I get very old and die, Mrs. Mactavish and Jock’s wife will be in heaven already, brought for the purpose by the Angel Gabriel, and they’ll make bramble jelly and seed cake for the love feast for me!” she said, eating a spoonful without spreading it on oatcake, encouraged by her aunt’s unwonted extravagance.  “I can’t be philosophical about bramble jelly!”