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 snowball?"

"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 superstitions," 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. butting in."

The remaining members of the Mafia, when consulted, received the idea
with enthusiasm. There is a vein of superstition 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 glass. 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
superstition of w