TOBIN’S PALM

Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was four dollars between us, and Tobin had need of distractions.  For there was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since she started for America three months before with two hundred dollars, her own savings, and one hundred dollars from the sale of Tobin’s inherited estate, a fine cottage and pig on the Bog Shannaugh.  And since the letter that Tobin got saying that she had started to come to him not a bit of news had he heard or seen of Katie Mahorner.  Tobin advertised in the papers, but nothing could be found of the colleen.

So, to Coney me and Tobin went, thinking that a turn at the chutes and the smell of the popcorn might raise the heart in his bosom.  But Tobin was a hardheaded man, and the sadness stuck in his skin.  He ground his teeth at the crying balloons; he cursed the moving pictures; and, though he would drink whenever asked, he scorned Punch and Judy, and was for licking the tintype men as they came.

So I gets him down a side way on a board walk where the attractions were some less violent.  At a little six by eight stall Tobin halts, with a more human look in his eye.

“’Tis here,” says he, “I will be diverted.  I’ll have the palm of me hand investigated by the wonderful palmist of the Nile, and see if what is to be will be.”

Tobin was a believer in signs and the unnatural in nature.  He possessed illegal convictions in his mind along the subjects of black cats, lucky numbers, and the weather predictions in the papers.

We went into the enchanted chicken coop, which was fixed mysterious with red cloth and pictures of hands with lines crossing ’em like a railroad centre.  The sign over the door says it is Madame Zozo the Egyptian Palmist.  There was a fat woman inside in a red jumper with pothooks and beasties embroidered upon it.  Tobin gives her ten cents and extends one of his hands.  She lifts Tobin’s hand, which is own brother to the hoof of a drayhorse, and examines it to see whether ’tis a stone in the frog or a cast shoe he has come for.

“Man,” says this Madame Zozo, “the line of your fate shows—­”

“Tis not me foot at all,” says Tobin, interrupting.  “Sure, ’tis no beauty, but ye hold the palm of me hand.”

“The line shows,” says the Madame, “that ye’ve not arrived at your time of life without bad luck.  And there’s more to come.  The mount of Venus—­or is that a stone bruise?—­shows that ye’ve been in love.  There’s been trouble in your life on account of your sweetheart.”

“’Tis Katie Mahorner she has references with,” whispers Tobin to me in a loud voice to one side.

“I see,” says the palmist, “a great deal of sorrow and tribulation with one whom ye cannot forget.  I see the lines of designation point to the letter K and the letter M in her name.”