Part 16 (1/2)
October pa.s.sed by with flaming crimson and gold on the trees, and orange and mauve toadstools among the moss of the woods, and squirrels scampering up the Scotch pines at the top of the garden, laying by their winter store of nuts; and flocks of migrating birds twittering in the fields, and hosts of glittering red hips and haws in the hedges, and shrouds of fairy gossamer over the blackberry bushes. It was Carmel's first autumn in England, and, though her artistic temperament revelled in the beauty of the tints, the falling leaves filled her with consternation.
”It is so sad to see them all come down,” she declared. ”Why the trees will soon be quite bare! Nothing but branches left!”
”What else do you expect?” asked Gowan. ”They won't keep green all the winter.”
”I suppose not. But in Sicily we have so many evergreens and shrubs that flower all the winter. The oranges and lemons begin to get ripe soon after Christmas, and we have agaves and p.r.i.c.kly pears everywhere. I can't imagine a landscape without any leaves!”
”Wait till you see the snow! It's prime then!”
”There's generally snow on Etna, but I haven't been up so high. It doesn't fall where we live.”
”Girl alive! Have you never made a s...o...b..ll?”
”Never.”
”Then it's a treat in store for you. I sincerely hope we shall have a hard winter.”
”We ought to, by the number of berries in the hedges,” put in Bertha.
”It's an old saying that they foretell frost.
”'Bushes red with hip and haw, Weeks of frost without a thaw.'
I don't know whether it always comes true, though.”
”I'm a believer in superst.i.tions,” declared Gowan. ”Scotch people generally are, I think. My great-grandmother used to have second sight.
By the by; it's Hallowe'en on Friday! I vote we rummage up all the old charms we can, and try them. It would be ever such fun.”
”Topping! Only let us keep it to the Mafia, and not let the others know.”
”_Ra_ther! We don't want Laurette and Co. b.u.t.ting in.”
The remaining members of the Mafia, when consulted, received the idea with enthusiasm. There is a vein of superst.i.tion at the bottom of the most practical among us, and all of them were well accustomed to practise such rites as throwing spilt salt over the left shoulder, curtseying to the new moon, and turning their money when they heard the cuckoo.
”Not, of course, that it always follows,” said Prissie. ”On Easter holidays a bird used to come and tap constantly at our drawing-room window at home. It was always doing it. Of course that means 'a death in the family,' but we all kept absolutely hearty and well. Not even a third cousin once removed has died, and it's more than two years ago.
Mother says it was probably catching insects on the gla.s.s. She laughs at omens!”
”I always double my thumb inside my fist if I walk under a ladder,”
volunteered Noreen.
”Well, it _is_ unlucky to go under a ladder,” declared Phillida. ”You may get a pot of paint dropped on your head! I saw that happen once to a poor lady: it simply turned upside down on her, and deluged her hat and face and everything with dark green paint. She had to go into a shop to be wiped. It must have been awful for her, and for her clothes as well.
I've never forgotten it.”
”What could we do on Hallowe'en?” asked Edith.
”Well, we must try to think it out, and make some plans.”
From the recesses of their memories the girls raked up every superst.i.tion of which they had ever heard. These had to be divided into the possible and the impossible. There are limits of liberty in a girls'
school, and it was manifestly infeasible, as well as very chilly, to attempt to stray out alone at the stroke of twelve, robed merely in a nightgown, and fetch three pails of water to place by one's bedside.