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CHAPTER XX.

A Quiet Household—­Absence of Marguerite and Gabrielle—­Amusing Letters from them—­A Gypsy Fortune-teller—­Marguerite returns with a Visitor—­The Harvest Moon—­Preparing for Company—­Arranging the Blue Room—­Intense Anticipation—­“‘He Cometh Not,’ She Said.”

August 14.

Our little household has been unusually quiet for the past week, owing to the absence of the two lively members of the family, Marguerite and Gabrielle, who are visiting friends by the seaside and upon the shores of Seneca Lake.  Their absence makes a great change in the ways of the household, for Ida and I have not the high spirits and constant flow of words that distinguish our sisters, and we spend our time as quietly and busily as two little nuns, not even dreaming of asking any one to come up from the city and pass Saturday with us.  We miss them very much, especially at the table, and in the half hour after tea, when we always gather about mamma’s sofa for a little chat, before separating for our evening’s work—­writing, practising, or whatever it may be.

Ida and I usually form the audience upon these occasions, and listen with great interest to Marguerite’s entertaining stories of adventures at home and abroad, or Gabrielle’s droll mimicry of the strongly marked characteristics of some one she has met or dreamed of.  Sometimes the candles are extinguished, and a ghost story is told, for Gabrielle is fond of the supernatural, and her dramatic style of narration adds much to our enjoyment; indeed, chancing the other day to read in a magazine one of her pet stories, I was astonished to find how tame it sounded.

Ida and I find, however, some compensation for our sisters’ absence in their sprightly letters, which arrive while we are at the tea-table.  Marguerite writes every day, and her letters are inimitable in their humor and esprit, for she writes exactly as she talks.  She is visiting some friends whose acquaintance we made in Paris, and who have a beautiful country-seat upon Long Island.  Her letters are filled with accounts of drives, fishing-parties, and excursions in yachts and row-boats, and, lastly, of meeting a real gypsy encampment (not the time-honored one in “Trovatore”) and having her fortune told.

A gypsy woman, it seems, stopped the carriage as Marguerite was driving past, and expressed so strong a desire to “unveil the future for the young lady,” that Marguerite consented, and held out her hand.  Quite scornfully the gypsy said that her own palm must first be crossed with money.  Marguerite accordingly gave her a dollar bill, thinking that would be the full value of any fortune she would receive from a wandering gypsy, but the money was indignantly returned—­the oracle did not tell one-dollar fortunes.