Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/154

142 mutter about a "journey," and some papers that were to be signed, and a "false" dark woman who pretended to be Mrs. Byrne's friend, but would do her an injury.

Mrs. Cregan sat as if she were waiting for her turn to enter a confessional, her hands folded, her head dropped. She heard Mrs. Byrne whispering hoarsely, but she did not listen.

Madame Wampa said, at last, wearily: "Very well. Send her in."

She shuffled her cards and sighed. She was professionally acquainted with many griefs, and she took her toll of them. They meant no more to her than sickness does to a quack. She looked up at Mrs. Cregan's entrance almost absent-mindedly.

But there was, at once, something so helplessly stricken about the woman's plump despair, so infantile, so touchingly ridiculous, that Madame Wampa even smiled faintly and moved the bamboo table to let Mrs. Cregan squeeze into the chair that waited her. She sat down and held out her money in her palm. Madame Wampa took her hand. "I will tell you," she said. "I will see it in your hand."

She crossed the palm three times with the coin, and began in the monotonous voice and with the expressionless face of the fakir: "You—you 're married. Many years. I see many years. You 've not been happy. Monday 'is your unlucky day. Don't begin nothin' on Monday. You are thinkin' of takin' a journey—somethin'—some change. It won't end good.