"I haven’t been eating very much candy." Amy sighed so heavily that Peggy looked at her again. Amy had really lost flesh, but that was not all. About her hung an air of depression, as inconsistent with the normal Amy as hollow cheeks, or a total loss of appetite. "Amy, I believe something is the matter. What is it?" "You’d think it was silly." Amy’s tone indicated a longing to confide her griefs, only restrained by a dread of being laughed at. "Silly troubles are the very worst of all sometimes," Peggy declared comfortingly. "Go ahead, dear. Out with it." For a moment Amy hesitated. Then her pent-up woes burst bounds. "I’m not going to live through the year." "What!" Peggy could not believe that she had heard aright. "What did you say? I didn’t understand." "I’m not going to live through the year." Amy repeated her startling statement with a deliberation and an emphasis which carried the conviction that at least she meant what she said. Peggy burst into excited expostulation. "Amy, you’re crazy. I never heard anything so absurd. You have lost a little flesh, to be sure, but no more than is becoming. I thought you would be delighted. What makes you think that anything ails you?" "I didn’t say that anything ailed me, did I?" "If you don’t expect to live, it stands to reason that you must be sick." Amy shook her head. "I might be killed in an accident. Or I might be taken sick suddenly, and not live more than two or three days." Peggy’s suspicions were aroused. "Amy Lassell, you’ve been doing something silly." "You can laugh if you like. I dare say it seems funny to you." Amy spoke with an injured air which Peggy failed to notice, so busy was she in following the clue which her quick wit had suggested. "I know," she burst out. "It’s a fortune teller." Amy made no effort at evasion. On the whole it seemed a relief to be found out. "Yes, it was a fortune teller. But if she’d been a faker she never would have told me that, you know yourself. They tell you how rich you’re going to be, and whether you’re going to be married once or twice, and things of that sort. But the ones who are just tricksters, don’t ever tell people they are going to die right away." Peggy checked her impulse to laugh. The thing might seem a joke to her, but it was serious enough to Amy. Her loss of flesh, and even more the haunted look in her eyes, was proof of that. "Tell me all about it," she said soothingly, and Amy closed with her offer so hastily as to suggest that all she had wanted was a chance. "She’s a woman on West Spring Street, Madame Planchet. Lots of girls go there to get their fortunes told, just for the fun of the thing. One day Blanche Estabrook and I were going past, when she suggested that we should stop. Madame Planchet only charges a quarter." "That’s cheap, considering what she gives you," observed Peggy with an irony that glanced harmlessly from her friend’s armor.