Read Ebook: Ethel Morton's Holidays by Smith Mabell S C Mabell Shippie Clarke

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Ebook has 842 lines and 31561 words, and 17 pages

he wondered as Roger began a distribution of colored bands.

"These are to tie your eyes with," he explained: "Yellow, you see; Hallowe'en color. The girls insist on my explaining all their fine points for fear they won't be appreciated," he said to the doctor.

"Quite right. I never should have thought about the color."

"Mother, this is George Foster," said Helen, welcoming a tall boy who was not a member of the U. S. C. but who had helped at the Club entertainment by taking part in the minuet. He shook hands with Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Smith and then submitted to having his eyes bandaged. He was followed by Gregory Patton, another high school lad, and to the great joy of everybody, James, after all, came on his crutches with Margaret.

"Now, then, my blindfolded friends," said Roger, "Grandfather tells me that it is the custom in Scotland where fairies and witches are very abundant, for the ceremony that we are about to perform to open every Hallowe'en party. He has it direct from Bobby Burns."

"Then it's right," came a smothered voice from beneath James' bandage.

"James is of Scottish descent and he confirms this statement, so we can go ahead and be perfectly sure that we're doing the correct thing. Of course, we all want to know the future and particularly whatever we can about the person we're going to marry, so that's what we're going to try to find out at the very start off."

"Take off my bandage," cried Dicky. "I know the perthon I'm going to marry."

A shout of laughter greeted this assertion from the six-year-old.

"Who is it, Dicky?" asked Helen, her arm around his shoulders.

"I'm going to marry Mary," he asserted stoutly.

There was a renewed peal at this, and Roger went on with his instructions.

"I'll lead you two by two to the kitchen door and then you'll go down the flight of steps and straight ahead for anywhere from ten to twenty steps. That will land you right in the middle of what the frost has left of the Morton garden. When you get there you'll 'pull kale'."

"Meaning?" inquired George Foster.

"Meaning that you'll feel about until you find a stalk of cabbage and pull it up."

"I don't like cabbage," complained Tom Watkins.

"You'll like this because it will give you a lot of information. If it's long or short or fat or thin your future husband or wife will correspond to it."

"That's the most unromantic thing I ever heard," exclaimed Margaret Hancock. "I certainly hope my future husband won't be as fat as a cabbage!"

"You can tell how great a fortune he's going to have--or she--by the amount of earth that clings to the stem."

"Watch me pull mine so g-e-n-t-l-y that not a grain of sand slips off," said Tom.

"If you've got courage enough to bite the stem you can find out with perfect accuracy whether your beloved will have a sweet disposition or the opposite."

"In any case he'd have a disposition like a cabbage," insisted Margaret, who did not like cabbage any more than Tom did.

"Ready?" Roger marshalled his little army. "Two by two. Doctor and Ethel Blue, Tom and Dorothy, James and Helen, George and Ethel Brown, Gregory and Margaret. Come on, Della," and he led the way through the kitchen where Mary and the cook were hugely entertained by the procession.

With cries and stumbling they went forth into the cabbage patch, where they all possessed themselves of stalks which they straightway brought in to the light of the jack-o'-lanterns to interpret.

"My lady love will be tall and slender--not to say thin," began Dr. Watkins. "I see no information here as to the color of her hair and eyes. Fate cruelly witholds these important facts. I regret to say that I wooed her so vigorously that I shook off any gold-pieces she may have had clinging about her so I can only be sure of the golden quality of her character which I have just discovered by biting it."

Amid general laughter they all began to read their fortunes. Tom announced that his beloved was so thin that she was really a candidate for the attentions of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and that he couldn't find out anything about her character because there wasn't enough of her to bite.

Margaret had pulled a stalk that fulfilled all her expectations as to size, for it was so short and fat that she could see no relation between it and anything human and threw it out of the window in disgust. The rest found themselves fitted out with a variety of possibilities.

"There doesn't seem to be a real tearing beauty among them all," sighed Roger. "That's what I'd set my heart on."

"What do you expect from a cabbage?" demanded Margaret scornfully.

"I want to know whether I'm going to marry a bachelor or a widower or not marry at all," cried Helen. "Let's try the 'three luggies' next."

"First cabbages, then 'luggies'," said Della "What are 'luggies'?"

"'Luggies' are saucers," explained Helen, while James brought a small table and Ethel Brown arranged three saucers upon it. "In one of them I put clear water, in another one, sandy water, and nothing at all in the third. Anybody ready to try? Come, Della."

Della came forward briskly, but hesitated when she found that she must be blindfolded.

"There isn't any trick about it?" she asked suspiciously. "I shouldn't like to have anything happen to that saucer of sandy water."

"It won't touch anything but your finger tips, and perhaps not those," Helen reassured her. "What you are to do is to dip the fingers of your left hand into one of these saucers. If it proves to be the one with the clear water you'll marry a bachelor; if it's the sandy one he'll be a widower, and if it's the empty one you'll be a spinster to your dying day."

"You have three tries," cried Ethel Blue, "and the saucers are changed after each trial, so you have to touch the same one twice to be sure you really know your fate. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready," and Della bravely though cautiously dipped the finger tips of her left hand into the bowl of sandy water.

A cheer greeted this result.

"A widower, a widower," they all cried.

Helen changed the position of the saucers and Della made another trial. This time the Fates booked her as a spinster.

"That's the least trouble of anything," decided roly poly Della who took life carelessly.

A third attempt proved that a widower was to be her future helpmate, for her fingers went into the sandy saucer for a second time.

"I only hope he won't be an oldy old widower," said Della thoughtfully. "I couldn't bear to think of marrying any one as old as Edward."

"I'll thank you to take notice that I haven't got a foot in the grave just yet, young woman," retorted her brother.

While some of the others tried their fate by the saucer method, the rest endeavored to learn their future occupations by means of pouring melted lead through the handle of a key. Roger brought in a tiny kettle of lead from the kitchen where Mary had heated it for them and set it down on a small table on a tea pot stand, so that the heat should not injure the wood. Taking a large key in his left hand he dipped a spoon into the lead with his right and poured the contents slowly through the ring at the end of the handle of the key into a bowl of cold water. The sudden chill stiffened the lead into curious shapes and from them those who were clever at translating were to discover what the future held for them in the way of occupation.

"Mine looks more like a spinning wheel than anything else," said Roger who had done it first so that the rest might see how it was accomplished.

"Perhaps that means that you'll be a manufacturer of cloth," suggested Margaret. "Mine looks more like a cabbage than anything else. You don't think it can mean that I shall have to devote myself to that husband I pulled out of the cabbage patch?"

"Here are several things that we can do one at a time while the rest of us are doing something else," said Helen. "They have to be done alone or the spell won't work."

"Let's hear them," begged Gregory, while he and the others grouped themselves about the open fire in the living room and prepared to burn nuts.

"The first one, according to Burns, is to go alone to the kiln and put a clew of yarn in the kiln pot."

"What does that mean translated into Rosemont language?" demanded James.

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