“You are—what you call it?—a farmer,” Sally went on in her seductively
deepened voice. Oh, it was fun to “play-act” and to be paid for it! “You
va-ry reach young man. Va-ry beeg farm. You have mother, father, li’l
seester.” Thank heaven, her ears had been keen that night of Pearl’s
party, even if she had been inarticulate with shyness! “You ar-re in
love. I zee a gir-rl, a beeg, pretty gir-rl with red hair an’ blue eyes.
Ees it not zo?” Her little low laugh was a gurgle, which started a shout
of laughter in the crowd.
“Yeah, I reckon so,” Ross Willis admitted, blushing more violently than
ever.
“Oh, you Pearl!” a girl’s voice shrilled from the crowd.
“You mar-ry with thees gir-rl, have three va-ry nize childs,” Sally went
on delightedly. After all, why shouldn’t Pearl marry Ross Willis, since
she could not have David? “Zo! That ees all I zee,” she concluded with
sweet gravity. “Zee creestal she go dark now.”
Ross Willis thanked “Princess Lalla” awkwardly and dropped from the
platform to the grass-stubbled ground, entirely unaware that the
marvelous seeress was little Sally Ford.
Confidence and mirth welled up in Sally. She began to believe in herself
as “Princess Lalla,” just as she had always more than half-believed that
she was the queen or the actress whom she had impersonated in the old
days so recently ended forever, when she had “play-acted” for the other
orphans.
The next seeker after knowledge of “past, present and future” was not so
easy, but not very hard either, for the applicant was a girl, a pretty,
very urban-looking girl, who wore a tiny solitaire ring on her
engagement finger and who had been clinging to the arm of an obviously
adoring young man. For the pretty girl Sally obligingly foretold a happy
marriage with a “dark, tall young man, va-ry handsome”; a long journey,
and two children. The girl sparkled with pleasure, utterly unconscious
of the fact that “Princess Lalla” had told her nothing of the past and
very little of the present.
Quarters were thrust upon her thick and fast. Because of the brisk
demand for her services, Sally gave only the briefest of “readings,” and
only a few muttered angrily that it was a swindle. To a middle-aged
farmer she gave a bumper wheat crop, a new eight-cylinder car, a
prospective son-in-law for the girl whom Sally had unerringly picked out
as his unmarried daughter, and the promise of many splendid
grandchildren. To a freckled, open-faced, engaging youngster of ten,
thrust upon the platform by his adoring mother, she grandly promised
nothing less than the presidency of the United States, as well as riches
and a beautiful wife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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