E. Nesbit

“ Beale has got a book at her house called 'Napoleon's book of Fate.' You might ask her to let you go and get it, Oswald. She likes you best."
Oswald is as modest as any one I know, but the truth is the truth.
"We could tell our fortunes, and read the dark future," Alice went on. "It would be better than high thinking without anything particular to think about." ”

“ The donkey-cart drew up at the door and we started. It was found impossible to get every one into the cart at once, so we agreed to cast lots for who should run behind, and to take it in turns, mile and mile. The lot fell on Dora and H.O., but there was precious little running about it. Anything slower than that donkey Oswald has never known, and when it came to passing its own front door the donkey simply would not. It ended in Oswald getting down and going to the animal's head, and having it out with him, man to man. The donkey was small, but of enormous strength. ”

“ It was beastly hot doing it under the veils, but when Oswald had done one tune without the veil to see how the others looked he could not help owning that the veils did give a hidden mystery that was a stranger to simple combs.
We were all a bit puffed when we had played for awhile, so we decided that as the donkey seemed calm and was eating grass and resting, we might as well follow his example.
"We ought not to be too proud to take pattern by the brute creation," said Dora. ”

“ Though of course it was much better fun for them than for us, because we had just to be mutes when we weren't playing on the combs.
The people we told fortunes to at first laughed rather, and said we were too young to know anything. But Oswald said in a hollow voice that we were as old as the Pyramids, and after that Alice took the tucks out of Dicky's red coat and put it on and turbaned herself, and looked much older.
The stable clock had chimed the quarter to five some little time, when an elderly gentleman with whiskers, who afterwards proved to be Sir Willoughby, burst into the tent. ”

“ It is rather difficult to get up any good game in a house like Miss Sandal's, where there is nothing lying about, except your own things, and where everything is so neat and necessary. Your own clothes are seldom interesting, and even if you change hats with your sisters it is not a complete disguise.
The idea of being gipsies was due to Alice. She had not at all liked being entirely out of the smuggling affray, though Oswald explained to her that it was her own fault for having been born a girl. ”

“ Servants' clothes are always good for dressing-up with; they have so many different colours. But Miss Sandal had no servant. Still, she might have had one once, and the servant might have left something behind her. Dora suggested this and added—
"If you don't find anything in the attic you'll know it's Fate, and you're not to do it. Besides, I'm almost sure you can be put in prison for telling fortunes."
"Not if you're a gipsy you can't," said Noël; "they have licences to tell fortunes, I believe, and judges can't do anything to them." ”

“ There were cloaks and dresses and skirts and scarves, of all the colours of a well-chosen rainbow, and all made of the most beautiful silks and stuffs, with things worked on them with silk, as well as chains of beads and many lovely ornaments. ”

“ The motor car people behaved as you would expect. But accidents happen even to motor cars, when people laugh too long and too unfeelingly. The driver turned round to laugh, and the motor instantly took the bit between its teeth and bolted into the stone wall of the churchyard. No one was hurt except the motor, but that had to spend the day at the blacksmith's, we heard afterwards. Thus was the outraged Oswald avenged by Fate. ”

“ And we did stick to it, though it is far less fun than you would think telling fortunes all the afternoon in a stuffy tent, while outside you know there are things to eat and people enjoying themselves. But there were the two gold quid, and we were determined to earn them. It is very hard to tell a different fortune for each person, and there were a great many. The girls took it in turns, and Oswald wonders why their hairs did not go gray. ”

“ We asked one man, who was very Sunday-best indeed in black clothes and a blue tie, where every one was going, for every one was going the same way, and every one looked as if it was going to church, which was unlikely, it being but Thursday. ”

“ And in the morning it was still raining and Alice said—
"Look here, if it ever clears up again let's dress up and be gipsies. We can go about in the distant villages telling people's fortunes. If you'll let me have the book all to-day I can learn up quite enough to tell them mysteriously and darkly. And gipsies always get their hands crossed with silver."
Dicky said that was one way of keeping the book to herself, but Oswald said—
"Let her try. She shall have it for an hour, and then we'll have an exam. to see how much she knows." ”

“ Every one stared at us, but they did not seem so astonished as we had every right to expect, and though interested they were not rude, and this is very rare among English people—and not only poor people either—when they see anything at all out of the way. ”

“ Beale, going on with peeling the potatoes that were to be a radiant vision later on, all brown and crisp in company with a leg of mutton—"if it's the Holy Book you want there's one up on Miss Sandal's chest of drawerses."
"I know," said Oswald. He knew every book in the house. The backs of them were beautiful—leather and gold—but inside they were like whited sepulchres, full of poetry and improving reading. "No—we didn't want that book just now. It is a book called 'Napoleon's book of Fate.' Would you mind if I ran up to your place and got it?"
"There's no one at home," said Mrs. Beale ”