"Eat it the last thing before you retire," said Miss Allison. "Then walk to bed backwards without taking a drink of water or speaking another word to-night. It is so salty that it is likely you will dream of being thirsty, and of somebody bringing you water. They say if you dream of its being brought in a golden goblet you will marry into wealth. If in a tin cup poverty will be your lot. The kind of vessel you see in your dream will decide your fate. Ah, Walter got the button in his slice. That means he will be an old bachelor and sew his own buttons on all his life."
Anna Moore got the dime, and Eliza Hughes the ring, which foretold that she would be the first one in the company to have a wedding. The thimble fell to no one, as it slipped out between two slices in the cutting. "That means none of us will be old maids," said little Elise. Miss Allison slipped it on Kitty's finger. "To mend your mischievous ways with," she said, and everybody who had enjoyed the pillow-man laughed.
The moon was hiding behind a cloud when at last the merry party said good-night, so Miss Allison provided each little group with a Jack-o'-lantern to light them on their homeward way. As the grotesque yellow heads with their grinning fire-faces went bobbing down the lonely road, it was well for Tam O'Shanter that he need not pass that way. All the witches of Allway Kirk could not have made such a weird procession. Well, too, for old Ichabod Crane that he need not ride that night through the shadowy Valley. One pumpkin, in the hands of the headless rider, had been enough to banish him from Sleepy Hollow for ever. What would have happened no one can tell, could he have met the long procession of bodiless heads that straggled through the gate that Hallowe'en, from the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow.
CHAPTER XII.
THE HOME OF A HERO.
With November came heavier frosts and the first light snowfall of the season, a skim of ice on the meadow-ponds, shorter days, and long cheerful evenings around the library fire. More than that, it brought the end of the extra home-lessons, for by this time the Little Colonel had not only caught up with her classes, but stood at the head of most of them.
"I think she deserves a reward of merit," said Papa Jack when she came home one day, proudly bearing a record of perfect recitations for a week. And so it came about that the next Friday afternoon she had a reward of her own choosing. Allison, Kitty, and Elise were invited out to stay until Monday. So for two happy days four little girls raced back and forth under the bare branches of the locusts, where usually one lonely child walked to and fro by herself. And because the daylight did not last half long enough, and because bedtime seemed to come hours too soon, they were invited to come out next week also.