Marion Marlowe on the Prairie, or, A Thrilling Ride Across Kansas — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MY QUEEN. | 3 Bert; it won't destroy my appetite. Just or- der a rousing dinner for four, and we'll join you in an hour, as I see the sign says ‘fifteen minute sittings.’ ”’ “Good-by not mislead me!’’ muttered thé young man, tragically. “Methinks I see the end of all! this. I shall be greeted an hour hence with glassy eyes and sepulchral whispers !” He darted across the street as he spoke, and vanished into the restaurant, and, a minute later, the three light-hearted young girls were ushered into the waiting-room just outside girls! Your merriment doth of the fortune teller’s private sanctum. CHAPTER II. THE FORTUNES. “Oh, girls! What did she tell you? I am so glad I went, I don’t know what to do!” cried Miss Ellis, as she joined her friends again an hour later, and all started across the street toward the restaurant. Marion’s lips had grown pale, but she tried to smile bravely, and, before either could answer, the ingénue was running on merrily: “She told me I was to be happily married in less than a year, and that my husband was handsome and true and wealthy! Of course, I knew all that, but still, I was glad to have her say so, and, oh! she said I was to have a great sensation in my life—something strange and thrilling! Some one is to plot treachery against one of my friends, and I am to expose it! Really, I can almost feel myself.a heroine already! It is a delightful sensation. Marion, but then, you are used to it.” “And I am not to marry the man I love.” said Miss Allyn, smilingly. “But I am to Marry another whose name I do not know. He is to appear very soon and fall in love with me over the footlights! Now, isn’t that absurd! As if I could ever love any man but Henry !” They had reached the restaurant now, and J as they entered and saw Bert they all burst out laughing, The look of relief upon his face was per- fectly comical when he saw that they had apparently returned exactly as ‘they had left him, d “What! not a glassy eye, nor a pallid cheek? Why, what has happened? Was the oracle dumfounded? Did you queer the old lady so’that she couldn’t juggle the planets, or did you queer the planets so they juggled the old lady?” “We didn’t influence either the oracle or the planets, I am sure of that!” was Miss Allyn’s answer. ‘Really, Bert, she is a won- derful old lady. Her eyes are as black as coal, and her hair is white. She gave mie quite a start when I first caught sight of her.” “And did she go into a trance?” asked Bert, as the waiter began serving the dinner. Miss Allyn was busy with a piece of roast beef, so Miss Ellis answered: “She went into something, but I think it was a library,” she said, very demurely, “and she brought out a big book and a couple of charts, and then she did a little figuring over the day I was born, and then she told me you were the dearest, sweetest man that ever lived, and * “Humph! You knew that béfore without her telling you! Did she tel] you how the governor was going to take my proposition —the one I wrote him of from Omaha just after I popped the question? Tf she settled that little matter I'l] go back and give her another dollar, for, between you and me, I]’m getting as thin as a shadow Over it.” from worrying “ A one - hundred - and - sixty - five-pound shadow is a pretty substantial one, Bert.” laughed his sweetheart, merrily, and then, as something suddenly occurred to turned and looked at Marion. “Oh, T forgot to ask what Madam Zhangara told you, Mar. her, she COmMuicboooks.€©