"Is this the reception-room?" asked the lady, fixing her gla.s.ses and looking about her as if quite prepared to disbelieve any statement Miss Husted was about to make. That lady, much offended, drew herself up stiffly.

"Yes, this is the reception-room," she said, in a tone intended to be frigidly polite. "May I inquire to what am I indebted for the honour of this visit?"

The fat lady sniffed contemptuously and sat down.

"I think it's the sign 'Furnished Rooms' that can claim the honour,"

she said simply.

"Sit down, Jenny, and stop fidgeting," Miss Husted snapped out, ignoring the fat lady's attempt at smartness.

"I want a room if you have one vacant. My name is Mangenborn."

"Top floor?" inquired Miss Husted.

"I suppose you think a lady of my avoirdupois ought to live on the top floor so as to have plenty of exercise, eh?" inquired Mrs. Mangenborn with an attempt at humour. Then, without waiting for a reply, she went on:

"Well, you've just guessed right! What kind of people do you have in this house?"

"My guests are artists and gentlemen."

"Which?" inquired the stout lady, and laughed; she saw the joke if Miss Husted didn't and was good natured enough to laugh even if it were her own. "Well, I'm an artist," she said after a pause.

"Indeed?" said Miss Husted, and there was a slight inflection of sarcasm in that lady's voice.

Mrs. Mangenborn was either deaf or did not notice it, for she went on unconsciously:

"Yes, I am an artist--a second-sight artist."

"Second-sight?"

"Yes; I tell fortunes, read the future----"

"Oh?" said Miss Husted, and that one word was enough to have driven an ordinary person out of the front door, convinced of being insulted, but Mrs. Mangenborn was not sensitive.

"I should like a cup of tea," she said simply. "It's a very hot day."

The magnificent coolness of this request fairly caught Miss Husted.

This woman spoke like one accustomed to command; and much to Jenny's astonishment (she had been listening attentively) her aunt sent her to order tea for two.

Given a person who can tell fortunes, and another person on the lookout for one, a person who has infinite hope in the future, whose whole life indeed is in the future, and it doesn't take long to establish an _entente cordiale_. When Jenny came back a few minutes later, to her utter astonishment she saw the mysterious fat lady dealing cards to her aunt and talking of events past, present, and future; and her aunt chatting as pleasantly as if she had known the woman all her life.

"However can you tell that?" asked Miss Husted as she sipped her tea and cut the cards for the ninetieth time.

"Don't you see the king? That means a visitor!"

"Yes; but how did you know that my best first-floor rooms were to let?"

Mrs. Mangenborn shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

"_That_ I cannot tell you; I can't even tell myself; it just comes to me."

She did not remind Miss Husted that the best rooms in most boarding establishments in that locality were usually to let, because the people who could afford to pay the price seldom wanted to live in that neighbourhood; but she did tell her several things that must have pleased her immensely, for in a short while, after Mrs. Mangenborn had disposed of a second cup of tea, that lady was fairly ensconced in a seven-dollar front room on the first floor for a price that did not exceed three dollars. However, if half her predictions came true, it would have been a fine bargain for Miss Husted or any other landlady to have her as a guest.

As Jenny confided to Thurza in the kitchen a few hours later:

"You'll see. If the ground-floor parlor and bedroom aren't let next week, the new lady in the first floor front will get notice to leave because she's told a fortune that won't come true, and aunt will be angry. She keeps her word and she always expects people to keep theirs."

"My fortune never came true," grunted Thurza as she lifted a tub of washing off the table.

"Jenny, Mrs. Mangenborn wants you to go on an errand for her," called her aunt downstairs.

"Thought she wasn't never goin' to take females in her home again,"

said Thurza, as Jenny went upstairs to obey her aunt's order.

As Jenny closed the front door gently on her way to the stores, she mused sadly on the fact that her aunt, and not Mrs. Mangenborn, had given her the money with which to make the purchases. She hoped with childish optimism that the second-sight lady would pay her back; the other guests never did. Jenny sighed as she thought how much easier it would be on rent-days if auntie didn't advance money.

The front-door bell rang so often that day that Thurza declared it rang when it didn't ring, and was equally positive that the dratted bell didn't ring when it did ring. At all events, when the bell had been nearly jerked out of its socket for the third time, Miss Husted poked her head out of Mrs. Mangenborn's room and shouted for Thurza to hurry up and answer it. As she received no answer, she went down a flight to the head of the kitchen stairs, and gave vent to a most unusual display of temper. This was brought on by the fact that Mrs. Mangenborn had just declared that never in all her born days (to say nothing of her unborn moments) had she seen such a wonderful display of good fortune as that which lay in the cards spread on the table before them; there was a marriage just as sure as death. Mrs. Mangenborn was proceeding to describe the masculine element in the marriage proposition, and Miss Husted was trying to think who it could be, when the bell rang for the third time just as Thurza's head made its appearance above the kitchen stairs. Miss Husted decided to forget her dignity and go to the door herself.

Outside stood a hack piled up with baggage, and on the doorstep, waiting patiently, stood a gentleman who bowed when the door was opened and asked gently with a foreign accent, if Miss Husted had a room for a studio and a bedroom. There was much bustle and excitement, a great deal of noise, and a still greater deal of confusion, but when it had subsided and the hackman had been paid three times as much as he was legally ent.i.tled to, the baggage was carried, or rather tumbled, into the rooms engaged by the gentleman with the foreign accent. Miss Husted rushed into Mrs. Mangenborn's room and breathlessly gasped that her fortune had come true, for the front parlor and bedroom were let at their full prices.

"Just think of it, Mrs. Mangborn," as Miss Husted insisted on calling her "guest," "just think of it, full price in summer!"

Mrs. Mangenborn rose to the occasion.

"Why not?" demanded she, as if offended by Miss Husted's enthusiasm, "why not? The cards never lie! How much do you say he is to pay?" she went on, as if Miss Husted had told her and she had forgotten the precise amount.

"Fourteen," replied Miss Husted, "and it's a good price."

"Not bad! But wait, you'll see that's only the beginning," and Mrs.

Mangenborn mixed up the cards lying on the table oblivious of the fact that she had just shuffled Miss Husted's marital prospects out of existence.

"Oh, that's nothing," she hastened to say as she saw the expression of alarm on Miss Husted's face. "It'll come out again. It's in the cards and it must come out." Then she asked, "Who is he? What is he?"

"He's an artist of some sort, a fine, n.o.ble-looking old gentleman.

German! oh such fine, elegant manners; to the manner born I am sure! A musician, I think; he had a violin with him."

Mrs. Mangenborn's nose elevated itself a little.

"No money in music! What's his name?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Miss Husted. "He gave me his card, but I was so fl.u.s.tered I didn't look at it."

She opened the reticule she always carried at her side, containing keys, recipes, receipts, almost everything that could be crowded into it, and after quite a little sifting and sorting she took out a card on which was inscribed:

"Herr Anton Von Barwig."