ereal dropped right on to the floor. Kate Crombie, that porridge
dropped, an' when I looked there was a ring on the floor, a ring, my
dear. A wedding-ring of porridge, as you might say. Did I call Abe's
attention to it? I says, 'Abe,' I says, 'look!' He looked. And not
getting my meaning proper, he says, 'Call the dog an' let him lick it
up!' With that I says, 'Abe, ain't you got eyes?' And he being slow in
some things guessed he had. Then seeing I was put about some, he says,
'Carrie,' he says, 'what d'ye mean?' I see he was all of a quiver
then, and feeling kind of sorry for his ignorance I just shrugged at
him. 'Marriage bed!' says I. 'And,' I says, feeling he hadn't quite
got it, 'in Barnriff.' If that wasn't Eve's good luck, why, I ask
you."

"And when you were bathing----"

"Oh, that--that was another," Carrie replied hastily. "I'll tell
you----"

But Kate heard herself called away at that moment, and hurried back
into the hall. Her genius for administration was the ruling power in
the work of decoration, and the enthusiasm of the helpers needed her
controlling hand to get the work done by noon, which was the time
fixed for the wedding.

But omen was the talk everywhere; it was impossible to avoid it. Every
soul in the place had her omen. Jane Restless had a magpie. That very
morning the bird had stolen a leaden plummet belonging to Restless and
carried it to her cage, where she promptly set to work to hatch it
out. And she fought when Zac went to take it away. She made such a
racket when it was gone that Jane was sorry, and picked out a small
chicken's egg and put it into the bird's cage. "And, my dears," she
concluded triumphantly, "the langwidge that bird used trying to cover
up all that egg was simply awful. What about that for luck? A magpie
sittin' on a wedding-day!"

But, perhaps, of the whole list of omens that happened that morning,
Pretty Wilkes, the baker's wife, held the greatest interest for them
all. She was a woman whose austerity was renowned in the village, and
Wilkes was generally considered something of a hero. Her man had won
seventy dollars at poker the previous night, and had got very drunk in
the process. And being well aware of the vagaries of his wife's sense
of conjugal honor, had, with a desperate drunken cunning, bestowed it
over night in the coal-box, well knowing that it was one of his many
domestic pleasures to have the honor of lighting the cook-stove for
his spouse every mor