“Nothin’ ails us,” declared Phil. “We just feel like laughin’.”
“Ach,” said Aunt Rebecca, “this dumb laughin’ is all for nothin’. Anyhow, you better not laugh too much, for you got to cry as much as you laugh before you die.”
“Then I’ll have to cry oceans!” Amanda admitted. “There’ll be another Niagara Falls, right here in Lancaster County, I’m thinkin’.”
“Ach,” said Millie, “that’s just another of them old superstitions.”
“Yes,” Aunt Rebecca said solemnly, “nobody believes them no more. But it’s a lot of truth in ’em just the same. I often took notice that as high as the spiders build their webs in August so high will the snow be that winter. Nowadays people don’t study the almanac or look for signs. Young ones is by far too smart. The farmers plant their seeds any time now, beans and peas in the Posey Woman sign and then they wonder why they get only flowers ’stead of peas and beans. They take up red beets in the wrong sign and wonder why the beets cook up stringy. The women make sauerkraut in Gallas week and wonder why it’s bitter. I could tell them what’s the matter! There’s more to them old women’s signs than most people know. I never yet heard a dog cry at night that I didn’t hear of some one I know dyin’ soon after. I wouldn’t open an umbrella in the house for ten dollars--it’s bad luck--yes, you laugh,” she said accusingly to Philip. “But you got lots to learn yet. My goodness, when I think of all I learned since I was as old as you! Of all the new things in the world! I guess till you’re as old as I am there’ll be lots more.”
“Sure Mike,” said the boy, rather flippantly. “What’s all new since you was little?” he asked his aunt.
“Telephone, them talkin’ machines, sewin’ machines--anyhow, they were mighty scarce then--trolleys----”
“Automobiles?”
“My goodness, yes! Them awful things! They scare the life out abody. I don’t go in none and I don’t want no automobile hearse to haul me, neither. I’d be afraid it’d run off.”
“Great horn spoon, Aunt Rebecca, but that would be a gay ride,” the boy said, while Amanda giggled and Uncle Amos winked to Millie, who made a hurried trip to the stove for coffee.