palmistry to tell some very interesting fortunes.  She can amuse young people better than any one I ever knew.  Her two nephews, Malcolm and Keith MacIntyre, came out from Louisville for a short visit yesterday, and I’ll invite them, too.  They are jolly boys, and I’m sure you will find them far more entertaining than any of the gypsies.  What do you say to that plan?  Will it make up for the disappointment?”

“Yes, indeed!” answered Betty, and Eugenia smiled her approval, for she had heard Lloyd talk about the MacIntyre boys, and had been hoping to see them.  But when Mrs. Sherman had driven on, she turned to Betty with an angry face.

“Tattletale,” she said, in a sneering tone.  “Why did you go and spoil everything?  If you had kept still we could have gone and nobody would have been the wiser.  Now it will be no end of trouble to get there without her finding it out.”

“You don’t mean that you are going after all that godmother has said?” cried Betty, with a look of horror in her big brown eyes.  “Why, a wild Arab wouldn’t treat his host with such disrespect as that after he’d eaten his salt.”

Eugenia’s black eyes flashed dangerously.  “Yes, Miss Prunes and Prisms, I am going, I don’t care what you say.  I have made up my mind to have my fortune told by the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, that was born on the banks of the Nile, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t make me change it again.  It is foolish of Cousin Elizabeth to be so particular, and I am going to do as I please.  I always do at home, no matter what papa says.  I’ve never had to mind anybody all my life, and I’ll certainly not begin it now that I am in my teens.  It is all nonsense about it not being proper for us to go to the camp.  Cousin Elizabeth is mighty nice and sweet, but she’s an old fogy to talk that way.  And she needn’t think she has stopped me.  I may not get there to-day, but I’ll go to that camp before I go back to New York if it’s the last thing I do.”

She sprang out of the hammock and walked haughtily down the path, her head held high, and her pink ruffles switching angrily from side to side.  Betty followed at a safe distance, reaching the house in time to see Joyce and Lloyd come down, ready for their ride.  She would have made some excuse to stay at home if she thought that Eugenia intended to carry out her plans at once; but thinking she would surely not attempt it until a later day, she mounted with the others and started down the avenue.

At the gate, as they turned into the public road, they spied a noisy little cavalcade racing down the pike toward them.  Rob Moore led the charge, and two strangers were following hard behind.

“It’s the MacIntyre boys,” exclaimed the Little Colonel, shading her eyes with her hand and then half turning in her saddle to explain to the girls.  “It’s Malcolm and Keith.  You’ll like them.  They stayed out heah with their grandmothah one whole wintah, and they used to come up to ou’ house lots.  You remembah I told you ’bout them.  They bought that pet beah from a tramp and neahly frightened me to death at their valentine pahty.  I went into a dahk room, where it was tied up, and didn’t know it was theah till it stood up on its hind feet and came at me.  I neahly lost my mind, I was so sca’d.”