Page 7 - 1917 November - To Dragma

10 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA 0MICR0N PI
not Andy got to France, but, b'lieve me, I've felt like a different
person ever since. ' I t ain't always what you buy that you kin see that
gives you your money's worth,' I says to Kate. That's why I ' m here
again."
"You're right about that I think," put in a wan, colorless girl who
wore a wedding ring, " I haven't much to do in the afternoons and it
jes' seems sometimes as though I ' l l go straight up worrying about Jed.
Ever since he joined the machine gun company I haven't done much
else but sit and try to sew and wait for the evening papers. Still 1
can't get anything out of the war news. It's just like Greek to me.
I've a good notion to go back to work. Jed's mother was over yester-
day, an' she said that Mrs. Bjorlin never makes a mistake about
anything. Since she told me that Jed is comin' back, I've kind of
felt natural again."
" I wonder how she really knows," said a younger girl, who
apparently from her interest was a new visitor at the shrine. "Do you
suppose it's a gift ? I read a novel once called The Gift of Prophecy.
Do you suppose it's—it's—that?"
"Well, I don't know what it is, but i f there is anything you really
want to know about, Mrs. Bjorlin can tell you. How she does it, I
don't care, as long as I know about Jed," announced the colorless
girl with finality. "It's your turn, Madge."
As I listened to these girls discussing the lady I sought, a feeling
of unrest, of a strange desire to really have my future "read" possessed
me. Such is the influence which the old superstitions still exert upon
the mind. The crude philosophy voiced by the shop girl aroused
an eagerness to see the high priestess of Hawthorne Street. Would
she have dark, penetrating eyes? Would her study or reception
room or whatever place in which she held her seances be dim?
My excited imagination visualized heavy draperies and blue lights.
Suppose there should be slow music. Gradually the group who had
come before me were called to the shrine, entered, returned, left. I
watched the last of them depart.
"You may come in now." I t was a stout, matronly person in a
striped blue gingham house dress. There was no necessity for
attempting a false appearance of credulity. My active imagination
had been given ample time for operation. I was not only prepared
to be awed, I was prepared for anything. I almost wanted to put
aside my cynicism, and believe the seeress of Hawthorne Street, who-
ever she might be.
The room I entered was very different from my expectation. Per-
haps, I decided, it was merely an anteroom, and I would be admitted
to the shrine later. The chair I sat in was of ultra-ordinary wicker,
TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 11
with a crocheted contrivance neatly spread across it. The afternoon
sunshine streamed in through the white marquisette curtains, touching
the foliage of an orderly row of geranium pots. The attendant of the
striped house gown was closing the door carefully. Having done
this, she ensconced herself in a chair opposite me and favored me with
a casual survey.
"You live Meenapolis?" she asked with a disinterested but good-
humored stare.
I was dumfounded. I have said I was prepared for anything.
That is not true. My vendor of spirit messages was garbed, as no
seeress of fiction was ever depicted, in a gingham house dress! Her
name, which had impressed me as foreign, suddenly seemed to echo
in my ears as merely Scandinavian, for she spoke in the broken En-
glish of the typical Norwegian immigrant. My last illusion went
glimmering. Whoever heard of a priestess of the occult who couldn't
speak correct English, or at least Egyptian or Hungarian, anything
but Norwegian? But I was being questioned.
"You live in the country then, yes?"
She pondered it with closed eyes while I stared with unpolite
scrutiny at her stolid, middle-aged face, the slight droop at the corners
of the mouth, the lines on the shining forehead, the iron gray hair
drawn back tightly. I gave it up. My seeress was speaking in short,
jerky sentences, while her eyelids fluttered over her small gray eyes.
" A h ! I have i t — I see, I see, I see a small town! I see a school-
house, a white schoolhouse, is it not so?" She sighed deeply, " A h , "
this with a rising inflection to record a discovery, "there is also a
station, with a platform and a signboard, is i t not so? I'm right?
The station is painted red" (this last triumphantly).
As for me, when my seeress opened her eyes long enough to notice,
I acquiesced weakly. Whereupon she immediately lapsed comfort-
ably into a second trance. This was of short duration. She came
out of it aglow with a second great discovery.
"You are in love with a soldier," her grey eyes crinkled with good-
natured delight. "Is it not so?"
I decided to follow any lead, being in love with all soldiers.
" I see. I see. . . . I see your soldier with other soldiers about
him. He, why, he is thinking of you!"
I was overcome.
"Let me think now. This soldier of yours—he was drafted?"
I decided to be obstinate. My seeress was getting too self-com-
placent. "He enlisted," I said, with an effort to look forsaken.
"He is with other soldiers, as I say. The others are singing and
laughing but he—he is sad all the time. He think about you. I