"Well," sighed Katherine in miserable disappointment, "I suppose other people have to have vacations too. But it does seem heartbreaking that all our plans should be spoiled and poor Mr. Huntington should never find his grandson, after all."
"Yes," agreed Peggy, brushing away the baffled tears, "isn't there somebody else in town who--who sees things ahead?"
"Oh," objected Katherine, "not that mother would let us go to--but listen, we might go first and then explain all about it and she'd understand our motive. Let's look in the personals of the newspaper. Sometimes there is one advertised there."
So they sent James for a paper and eagerly scanned its columns until they found in inviting, bold type, "Madame La Mar, palmist and clairvoyant. I read the future: I tell your past: consult me about your business or your heart affairs."
"Ah," cried Katherine, and she read the address to James, while she squeezed Peggy's hand under the heavy robe.
A few minutes later the machine had drawn up before a frowsy little apartment building, very different from and far less prepossessing than the neat, newly painted little house of Madame Blakey's.
In spite of James' expression of mild surprise, the two girls got out and entered the building, searching as they did so for some card or call board by which they might locate Madame La Mar's rooms. There was no lock system on the doors and no cards of residents. They went on into the main hall and saw a row of uninviting doors, each with some name scrawled on it in pencil. On one door alone was a soiled visiting card bearing the proud name of Madame La Mar.
"Maybe I will in a--in a minute," hesitated Peggy. "Don't you think perhaps we'd better have James in?"
"No," said Katherine, "he's right out there, anyway, and could hear us if we wanted him for anything, and this apartment must face the street, so we could lean out and call him if it gets too trancified for us in there."
But they did not have to work up their courage to the point of forcing themselves to knock on the door, for the great Madame La Mar herself, hearing their whispering voices, now threw it open and stood before them in all the magnificence of tight fitting black velvet embroidered with occasional sequins that glittered here and there.