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Updated: May 12, 2025
She was followed by Mrs. Cregan, as guiltily reverential as if she were an altar boy who had been persuaded to join in some mischievous trespass on the "sanctuary." Madame Wampa received them, professionally insolent in her indifference. Mrs. Byrne explained that she wanted only a "small card reading" for twenty-five cents. Madame Wampa said curtly: "Sit down!" They sat down.
Madame Wampa said, at last, wearily: "Very well. Send her in." She shuffled her cards and sighed. She was professionally acquainted with many griefs, and she took her toll of them. They meant no more to her than sickness does to a quack. She looked up at Mrs. Cregan's entrance almost absent-mindedly.
Mrs. Cregan looked from side to side with a vaguely worried feeling that it must take a power of dusting and wiping to keep such a clutter of things clean; and this feeling gradually rose into her consciousness above the dull stupefaction of her grief. Madame Wampa, in the chintz tent, recited without expression: "Though you travel east or west, may your luck be the best."
Never mind that. There's nothin' to be scared of. Nothin' at all. No one'll see us. I been there meself, many's the time, an' no one knows it." Mrs. Byrne entered the "reception rooms" of Madame Wampa, "clairvoyant, palmist, and card-reader," with the propitiatory smile of the woman who knows she is doing wrong but is prepared to argue that there is "no great harm into it."
Madame Wampa shrugged one shoulder in her red kimono. "The lines do not say." She blew out the lamp and rose from the table. "That is all. It is impossible to tell much for a quarter. I give a full trance readin', with names, dates, and all questions answered " Mrs. Cregan "blessed" herself, with the sign of the cross, gasped, "God forgi' me!" and blundered out into the room. Mrs.
But there was, at once, something so helplessly stricken about the woman's plump despair, so infantile, so touchingly ridiculous, that Madame Wampa even smiled faintly and moved the bamboo table to let Mrs. Cregan squeeze into the chair that waited her. She sat down and held out her money in her palm. Madame Wampa took her hand. "I will tell you," she said. "I will see it in your hand."
She said: "I give a full trance readin' with names, dates, and all questions answered, for a dollar, or a full card readin' for fifty cents. It's impossible to tell much for a quarter." Mrs. Byrne shook her head. Madame Wampa said "Very well," in a tone of haughty resignation. She turned to a booth that had been made of turkey-red chintz in one corner of the room.
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