“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything!” said Eugenia, triumphantly.  “Betty was a goose not to go, wasn’t she?  Why, Betty, she told me my whole past, and even described the three girls I go with at school.  I am to have a long life and lots of money, and to be married twice.  And she told me to beware of a fleshy, dark person with black eyes, who is jealous of me and will try to do me harm.”

“What did she tell you, Joyce?” asked Betty, eagerly, feeling that she had missed the great opportunity of her life for lifting the veil that hid her future.

“She said that I had been across a big body of water and was going again, but the rest was a lot of stuff that I didn’t believe and can’t remember.”

“She didn’t give me a dollar’s worth of fortune,” complained Rob.  “Not by a long shot.”  He had paid his own way and now thought regretfully of the two circuses to which the squandered dollar might have admitted him.

“Let’s not tell anybody we’ve been here,” suggested Eugenia as they started homeward.  “It will make it so much more romantic, to keep it a secret.  We can wait and see what comes true, and tell each other years afterward.”

“But I always tell mothah everything,” cried the Little Colonel, in surprise.  “She would enjoy hearing the funny fortunes the old woman told us, and I’m suah if she knew how sick that poah baby is she’d send it something.  She is always helpin’ poah people.”

“But I have a special reason for keeping it a secret,” urged Eugenia.  “Promise not to say anything about it for awhile anyhow.  Wait till I am ready to go home.”

“Why?” asked Lloyd, with a puzzled expression.

“She’s afraid for godmother to know,” said Betty, unable to control her tongue any longer, and still smarting with the recollection of some of the things with which Eugenia had answered her refusal to go into the camp with them.

“It is no such a thing!” cried Eugenia.  “It was all right for us to go, and I’ve a private reason of my own for not saying anything about it for awhile.  It is a very little thing to ask, and I’m sure that, as a guest of Lloyd’s, it is a very little thing for her to do, to respect my wishes that much.”

“Oh, of course, if you put it that way,” said Lloyd, “I’ll not say anything about it till you tell me that I can.”

“You boys don’t mind promising, either, do you?” asked Eugenia, flashing a smile of her black eyes at each one in turn.

“Cross your hearts,” she cried, laughing, as they gave their promise, “and swear ’Really truly, blackly, bluely, lay me down and cut me in twoly,’ that you won’t tell.”

Joyce laughingly followed the boys’ example, and Eugenia gave a significant smile toward Betty, riding on alone in dignified silence.  “Then it is all right,” she exclaimed, loud enough for her to hear, “that is, if Miss Goody-goody doesn’t feel it her duty to run and tell.”

Betty was too angry to make any answer.  She rode on with her cheeks burning and her head held high.  Mrs. Sherman was sitting in the wide, cool hall when the little party stopped at the steps.  The boys had ridden down the avenue, too, and dismounted to speak to her.