The book and key oracle reigned supreme for several weeks and then gave place to the horoscope. For ten cents in stamps a certain seer dwelling in a remote town in Oregon offered to “cast” the principal events, past, present and future, in the lives of all young lady correspondents. It was not long before intimate heads were bent over scraps of paper comparing horoscopes. Hinpoha’s was acknowledged by all to be the gem of the collection.
“You have a brilliant future before you,” it read. “You will have a romantic love affair and will marry your first lover. He is a great scholar who will afterwards become president. You will meet him when you are very young.” Then followed a dozen lines more of brilliant prophecy. The special friends of Hinpoha, who had been allowed to peep at her fortune, Gladys, Sahwah, Katherine, Nakwisi and Medmangi, and one or two others, who had fore-gathered ostensibly to rehearse a school song, sat back and regarded their fortunate friend with awe. None of their fortunes had contained anything so dazzling.
“You’re going to be the President’s wife!” murmured Sahwah. “You won’t forget us, will you?”
“Never!” declared Hinpoha magnanimously, stealing a sly glance into the mirror.
“I hope you won’t be ashamed of me when I’m married and come calling at the White House,” said Katherine, rather dolefully. “All I drew was a farmer.”
“I only got an automobile manufacturer,” echoed Gladys.
“That’s what comes of having red hair,” said Sahwah enviously. “Her fortune said he would be drawn to her by her beautiful tresses.”
When Hinpoha was preparing for bed that night she stood fully an hour before the mirror and regarded her shining curls. Up until now she had never paid much attention to them except when the boys called her redhead and pretended to light matches on her head, and then she wished with all her heart, like the little girl in the song, that she had been “born a blonde.” Now for the first time her hair appeared beautiful to her. She arranged the curls this way and that, piling them on her head and letting them fall over her white shoulders. And all night she dreamed of standing up in a carriage and bowing graciously to cheering multitudes and clasping in her arms the forms of her girlhood friends who were among the crowd.
