ther's watchful
eyes to follow her advice. When she came down to lunch, the flush was
gone from her cheeks, but there was an uncomfortable pricking of her
conscience that stayed with her all that afternoon, and deepened
steadily after Miss Allison's arrival.

CHAPTER IX.

HER SACRED PROMISE.

The fortune-telling began immediately after dinner. Miss Allison sat one
side of a screen, and one by one the palms were thrust through a narrow
opening for her to examine. Mrs. Sherman sat beside her, so neither of
them saw the amused glances the children exchanged behind the screen,
whenever her prophecies contradicted what the old gypsy had told them.

"I can judge of your chief characteristics by your hands," she said,
"and it is wonderful how much palmistry reveals in that way; but I shall
have to draw on my imagination for your future fortunes." This she did
in such a bright amusing way that screams of laughter went up from
behind the screen, and the hands she held often shook with merriment.

Not having had the experience of the gypsy tent, Betty awaited her turn
with more interest than the others, and thrust her little brown hand
through the opening, half afraid. She wondered what secrets it would
tell Miss Allison, who, in addition to all the pleasant, complimentary
things she had told, had added some very plain truths. Eugenia's hand,
she said, showed its owner to be extravagant and wilful; Malcolm's, vain
and overbearing; Keith's, disorderly; and Rob's, lacking in judgment.

Miss Allison held Betty's hand a moment, not certain to whom it
belonged, although she might have guessed, considering how brown and
hardened by work it was. "Too sensitive and too imaginative by far," she
said. "But I like this little hand. It will always be faithful in little
things as well as big, and will keep its promises to the utmost. It is a
hand that can be trusted."

Betty's face shone. What Miss Allison had said pleased her more than the
fortune which followed, although it foretold a long life full of as many
interesting happenings as if she had Aladdin's wonderful lamp to use as
she chose. She looked at her hand with a new interest after she had
withdrawn it from the screen, and Keith found her studying it again
after the fortune-telling was done, and the others had gone into the
drawing-room.

Eugenia sat at the piano, Lloyd twanged on the harp, while Joyce tuned
her mandolin and Malcolm his banjo. Rob lolled in an open