I told 'em if you measured heights on Sunday
you'd like as not die before the year was out. I didn't know then she
had such a prejudice against signs, but since that time I've dragged
'em in every chance I got, just to spite her."

"More fool you!" said her mother, beginning to move the dasher of the
churn up and down with a steady motion. "You might have waited until
she was your mother-in-law before you began to spite her. The first
thing you know you won't get any mother-in-law."

"That's the only thing that would console me for losing Pitt!"
exclaimed Huldah. "If I can't marry him I don't have to live with her,
that's one comfort! The last thing she did was to tell Aunt Hitty
Tarbox she'd as lief have Pitt bring one of the original Salem witches
into the house as one of the Daniel Rumford tribe."

"The land sakes!" ejaculated the widow, giving a desperate and
impassioned plunge to the churn-dasher. "Now I know why I dreamt of
snakes and muddy water the night before she come here to the Ladies'
Aid Club. Well, she's seventy, and she can't live forever; she can't
take Eben Packard's money into the next world with her, either, and I
guess if she could 't would melt as soon as it got there."

Huldah persevered with her confession, dropping an occasional tear in
the dishwater.

"Last time Pitt came here he said he should have three or four days'
vacation the 12th of August, and he thought we'd better get married
then, if 't was agreeable to me. I was kind of shy, and the almanac
was hanging alongside of the table, so I took it up and looked to see
what day of the week the 12th fell on. 'Oh, Pitt,' I said, 'we can't
be married on Friday; it's dreadful unlucky.' He began to scold then,
and said I didn't care anything about him if I wouldn't marry him when
it was most convenient; and I said I would if 't was any day but
Friday; and he said that was all moonshine, and nobody but foolish old
women believed in such nonsense; and I said there wasn't a girl in
town that would marry him on a Friday; and he said there was; and I
asked him to come right out and tell who he meant; and he said he
didn't mean anybody in particular; and I said he did; and he said,
well, Jennie Perkins would, on Friday or Sunday or wash-day or any
other day; and I said if I was a man I vow I wouldn't take a girl that
was so anxious as all that; and he said he'd rather take one that was
a little too anxious than one that wasn't anxious enough; and s