"Of course neither of us took it a bit seriously," Amy explained. "We were both laughing when we went in and all the time Blanche was having her fortune told I fairly stuffed my handkerchief into my mouth, I giggled so. Blanche’s fortune didn’t sound a bit true, you know. It was all about coming into a lot of money, and that she was going to have a serious sickness when she was about twenty, but she’d recover and be a lot healthier after that. And I supposed mine would be just the same. But it wasn’t." "Go on!" Peggy prompted impatiently, for poor Amy paused, as if she found it difficult to disclose to another the black page of the future so unexpectedly revealed to herself. "Well, she looked at my hand a minute, and then she said, ’I can’t tell your fortune. There is nothing to tell.’ I was so stupid that I didn’t understand for a minute. I thought she only meant that there wouldn’t be much doing in my life, you know. And I asked her if I wasn’t going to get married. I thought fortune tellers married everybody off. And then she said in a dreadful voice, ’You have no future,’ and I began to understand." "Poor Amy! To pay a quarter for that!" Peggy cried, but Amy refused to smile. "I asked her how long I was likely to live, and she said it wasn’t possible to be exact. It might be six months, and it might be a little more. She was sure I shouldn’t live out the year." Amy paused a moment before she added, "And one month has gone already." "O, you goose!" cried Peggy. "You dear silly goose! Don’t you see how perfectly absurd it all is?" She launched into arguments convincing to herself, but useless as far as Amy was concerned. More profound logicians than Peggy long ago discovered the hopelessness of mere reason when confronted with a well-grounded superstition. Peggy went home thoroughly uneasy, and reproaching herself that her absorption in Elaine’s affairs had blinded her to Amy’s troubles. The month of anxiety had told upon the girl. The dismal prophecy might fulfil itself. Peggy’s attention wandered from her geometry that evening. More absorbing than the theorem assigned for her lesson was the question of helping Amy. When she suggested a walk the following afternoon there was a brightness in her eye which indicated that her hard thinking had not been unprofitable, in her own opinion at least. Amy was not inclined to be enthusiastic over the proposal. "I don’t know as I care much about walking where I’m likely to be seen. I thought it was going to rain this morning, and I put on this old tam I haven’t had on my head this year." "All the better," Peggy said jubilantly. Then, as Amy looked as if she would like to know what was meant by that speech, if it were not too much trouble to ask, Peggy added hastily, "We’ll take the side streets. It won’t matter if your tam is old."