Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/247

Rh How did you happen to consult one, Brenda? Did Aunt Anna know?”

“Oh, Julia,” cried Brenda, in the old impatient tone, “I don’t have to ask permission for everything I do, as if I  were a baby.”

“I did n’t mean that,” replied Julia, quickly, “I was only thinking that no fortune-tellers had come my way this  summer. But of course there’s no great harm in consulting them, if you don’t put too much faith in them.”

“Well, at any rate, here’s a wedding going to happen a little more than a month, after the gypsy foretold it,” rejoined Brenda, triumphantly.

Julia said no more, and the conversation turned to other things. But Brenda felt slightly uncomfortable. She hoped that no stray remark of Julia’s would set her mother  to inquiring about the gypsy, for she felt pretty sure that  Mrs. Barlow would disapprove of the whole affair.

“To change the subject,” she exclaimed, after a moment of silence, “we’d better go over to Marblehead Neck to-morrow to see Miss South. It is the only day we shall have before Agnes arrives, and I know you want to see  her.”

“Perhaps you don’t care about going yourself, Brenda.”

Miss South was one of the teachers at Miss Crawdon’s school, and Brenda had never seen as much of her as Julia  had; or, as the other girls put it, “Julia was terribly devoted to Miss South.” Brenda, on the other hand, was n’t  inclined to be devoted to any one.

“Oh, I’d like very well to see Miss South,” said Brenda,