However, a very little
amused me in those days; and I waited to have my fortune told, as
patiently as if I believed in it too!
My aunt began her hocus pocus by throwing out all the cards in the pack
under seven. She shuffled the rest with her left hand for luck; and then
she gave them to me to cut. "Wi' yer left hand, Francie. Mind that! Pet
your trust in Proavidence--but dinna forget that your luck's in yer left
hand!" A long and roundabout shifting of the cards followed, reducing them
in number until there were just fifteen of them left, laid out neatly
before my aunt in a half circle. The card which happened to lie outermost,
at the right-hand end of the circle, was, according to rule in such cases,
the card chosen to represent Me. By way of being appropriate to my
situation as a poor groom out of employment, the card was--the King of
Diamonds.
"I tak' up the King o' Diamants," says my aunt. "I count seven cairds fra'
richt to left; and I humbly ask a blessing on what follows." My aunt shut
her eyes as if she was saying grace before meat, and held up to me the
seventh card. I called the seventh card--the Queen of Spades. My aunt
opened her eyes again in a hurry, and cast a sly look my way. "The Queen
o' Spades means a dairk woman. Ye'll be thinking in secret, Francie, of a
dairk woman?"
When a man has been out of work for more than three months, his mind isn't
troubled much with thinking of women--light or dark.
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