Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/153

Rh been made of turkey-red chintz, in one corner of the room, and lit a small red lamp and sat down before a little bamboo table. A toy angel from a Christmas tree hung above her. A stuffed alligator sat up, on its hind legs, beside her—a porcelain bell hung on a red ribbon about its neck—to grin with a cheerful uncanniness on the rigmaroles of magic. She said: "Come!"

Mrs. Byrne entered the gipsy tent, and Mrs. Cregan was left alone in the atmosphere of a bespangled past reduced to its lowest terms of imposture. There were strings of Indian corn hanging from the ceiling, Chinese coins and rabbits' feet on the walls, a horseshoe wrapped in tinfoil over the door, and a collection of grotesque bric-à-brac on shelves and tables. There were necklaces of lucky beads for sale, and love charms in the shape of small glass hearts enclosing imitation shamrocks, and dream books and manuals of palmistry and gipsy cards for fortune-telling, and photographs of Madame Wampa in a gorgeous evening dress trimmed with feathers. Over all was a smoky odor of kerosene from an oil heater.

Mrs. Cregan looked from side to side with a vaguely worried feeling that it must take a power of dusting and wiping to keep such a clutter of things clean; and this feeling gradually rose into her consciousness above the dull stupefaction of her grief.

Madame Wampa, in the chintz tent, recited without expression: "Though you travel east or west, may your luck be the best." She dropped her voice to a