Fortune Telling - Page 2

I
saw he was talking to her instead of she to him, and by his glancing
towards us now and then, that he was giving the baggage some private
hints. When they returned to us, he assumed a very serious air.
"Zounds!" said he, "it's very astonishing how these creatures come by
their knowledge; this girl has told me some things that I thought no one
knew but myself!"

The girl now assailed the general: "Come, your honour," said she, "I see
by your face you're a lucky man; but you're not happy in your mind;
you're not, indeed, sir; but have a good heart, and give me a good piece
of silver, and I'll tell you a nice fortune."

The general had received all her approaches with a banter, and had
suffered her to get hold of his hand; but at the mention of the piece of
silver, he hemmed, looked grave, and turning to us, asked if we had not
better continue our walk. "Come, my master," said the girl archly,
"you'd not be in such a hurry, if you knew all that I could tell you
about a fair lady that has a notion for you. Come, sir, old love burns
strong; there's many a one comes to see weddings that go away brides
themselves!" Here the girl whispered something in a low voice, at which
the general coloured up, was a little fluttered, and suffered himself to
be drawn aside under the hedge, where he appeared to listen to her with
great earnestness, and at the end paid her half-a-crown with the air of
a man that has got the worth of his money.

The girl next made her attack upon Master Simon, who, however, was too
old a bird to be caught, knowing that it would end in an attack upon his
purse, about which he is a little sensitive. As he has a great notion,
however, of being considered a roister, he chucked her under the chin,
played her off with rather broad jokes, and put on something of the
rake-helly air, that we see now and then assumed on the stage by the
sad-boy gentlemen of the old school. "Ah, your honour," said the girl,
with a malicious leer, "you were not in such a tantrum last year when I
told you about the widow you know who; but if you had taken a friend's
advice, you'd never have come away from Doncaster races with a flea in
your ear!"

There was a secret sting in this speech that seemed quite to disconcert
Master Simon. He jerked away his hand in a pet, smacked his whip,
whistled to his dogs, and intimated that it was high time to go home.
The girl, however, was determined not to lose her harvest. She now
turned upon me, and, as I have a weakness of spirit where there is a
pretty face concerned, she soon wheedled me out of my money, and in
return read me a fortune which, if it prove true, and I am determined
to