“I don’t think it will hurt the bed,” Dorothea laughed back.
“I ain’t thinking of the baid, Missy,” Lucy explained. “It’s you, you’self, what’s gwine to have a big disappointment if you-all puts youh hat on the baid. Don’t ever forget that, missy, and please ring for Lucy nex’ time,”
“All right, Lucy,” Dorothea answered mock-seriously. “Next time I’ll put my hat on the floor if I don’t ring for you.”
“Thank yoh, missy, I sho’ will be grateful,” answered Lucy so earnestly that Dorothea looked at her, surprised at her tone.
“Do you really believe in luck, Lucy?” Dorothea asked idly, as the girl was brushing her hair.
“Does I believes in luck!” exclaimed Lucy. She held up her hands in amazement. “Does I believes in luck? No’m, I don’t believes in it, I knows it! Didn’t I see the new moon over my right shoulder and nex’ day didn’t Ole Miss send me for to take care of yoh?”
“I’m not sure that was luck, Lucy,” Dorothea could not help saying. “At any rate, I can’t see what the moon had to do with it.”
“The moon’s got a lot to do with luck, baby!” Lucy insisted. “Yoh kills a hog when the moon’s dwindlin’ and the meat’s gwine to dwine away to ’mos’ nothin’ when yoh puts it in the pot. Now nobody won’t say a rabbit’s foot off ’en a rabbit what was shot runnin’ ’cross a man’s grave of a Friday in the dark of the moon ain’t boun’ to be lucky. ’Cept ’tis foh that one thing, Friday’s a mighty unlucky day. You don’t want to start nothin’ on a Friday, honey.”
“I’ll try to remember,” said Dorothea, much amused, but keeping a sober face. “What else mustn’t I do, Lucy?”
“Well, missy, thehe’s lots o’ things it ain’t ’zackly good to do,” the girl, launched on a favorite subject, went on, brushing vigorously the while. “Yoh mustn’t get out of the wrong side of the baid in the mornin’. An’ if yoh puts on a stockin’ wrong side out yoh mus’ wear it awhile befoh yoh change it—but then, you’he boun’ to change it befoh eleven o’clock, less ’en yoh wants somethin’ bad to happen.”