before?" she asked in puzzled tones. "I have seen him somewhere, and I can't think where."
"Well, I'd never f-forget him," said Annette. "He's got the jolliest face I ever saw. M-Martha says he can jump that high fence b-back of the Hollises' without touching it. I d-drove dad's buggy clear up over the curbstone yesterday, so he would come to the r-rescue, and he swung on to old B-Baldy's neck like he had been a race-horse."
"But you don't know him," protested Ruth. "And, besides, he was he was a peddler."
"I don't care if he was," said Annette. "And if I don't know him, it's no sign I am not g-going to."
Aunt Melvy chuckled as she rose to encourage the fire with a pair of squeaking old bellows.
Martha looked about the room curiously. "Can you really tell what's going to happen?" she asked timidly.
"Indeed she can," said Annette. "She told Jane Lewis that she was g-going to have some g-good luck, and the v-very next week her aunt died and left her a turquoise-ring!"
"Yas, chile," said Aunt Melvy, bending over the fire to light her pipe; "I been habin' divisions for gwine on five year. Dat's what made me think I wuz gwine git religion; but hit ain't come yit not yit. I'm a mourner an' a seeker." Her pipe dropped unheeded, and she gazed with fixed eyes out of the window.
"Tell us about your visions," demanded Annette.
"Well," said Aunt Melvy, "de fust I knowed about it wuz de lizards in my legs. I could feel 'em jus' as plain as day, dese here little green lizards a-runnin' round inside my legs. I tole de doctor 'bout hit, Miss Nettie; but he said 't warn't nothin' but de fidgits. I knowed better 'n he did dat time. Dat night I had a division, an' de dream say, 'Put on yer purple mournin'-dress an' set wid yer feet in a barrel ob