“Superstition!” said Janet.
“What do you call your idea of the curse?” I retorted. “Anyway, I have an idea! Look, [pg 042] Janet! We’ll just cut up these enamel-cloth table-covers here by the sink and everywhere, and tack them around the spouts.”
Janet’s thrifty spirit was doubtful. “Don’t you need them?”
“Not half so much as the trees do. Come on! Pull them off. We’ll have to have fresh ones this summer, anyway.”
We stripped the kitchen tables and the pantry and the milk-room. We got tacks and a hammer and scissors, and out we went again. We cut a piece for each tree, just enough to go over each pair of spouts and protect the pail. When tacked on, it had the appearance of a neat bib, and as the pattern was a blue and white check, the effect, as one looked down the road at the twelve trees, was very fresh and pleasing. It seemed to cheer the people who drove by, too.
But the bibs served their purpose, and the sap dripped cozily into the pails without any distraction from alien elements. Sap doesn’t run in the rain, they say, but this sap did. Probably Hiram was right, and you can’t tell. I am glad if you can’t. The physical mysteries of the universe are being unveiled so [pg 043] swiftly that one likes to find something that still keeps its secret—though, indeed, the spiritual mysteries seem in no danger of such enforcement.
The next day the rain stopped, the floods began to subside, and Jonathan managed to arrive, though the roads had even less “bottom to ’em” than before. The sun blazed out, and the sap ran faster, and, after Jonathan had fully enjoyed them, the blue and white bibs were taken off. Somehow in the clear March sunshine they looked almost shocking. By the next day we had syrup enough to try for sugar.
For on sugar my heart was set. Syrup was all very well for the first year, but now it had to be sugar. Moreover, as I explained to Janet, when it came to sugar, being absolutely ignorant, I was again in a position to expect the aid of the fool’s Providence.
“How much do you know about it?” asked Janet.
“Oh, just what people say. It seems to be partly like fudge and partly like molasses candy. You boil it, and then you beat it, and then you pour it off.”