"Hallow Eve again," she sighed, "it have come round once more since that awful night, which I shall never be rid on seeing it before me—no, not if I live to be as old as Methusalah! And oh, what gloomy weather! How the wind do moan and the rain do pour 'round the old house! Just like heaving sighs and steaming tears! And as for me, I never feel like nothing but sighs and tears myself whenever this most doleful night comes round again."
And suiting the action to the word, the speaker drew a deep breath and wiped her eyes.
"Tabby, you're always a whimpering. When 'tan't about one thing 'tis about another. Seems to me a woman of your age, turned fifty, ought to have more sense!" sharply commented old Mrs. Winterose, as she took a roll of wool from her card and placed it softly on a pile of others that lay upon the table.
"I can't help of it, mother. I can't, indeed. Whenever this most doleful night do come round again, I feel that low sperreted I don't know what to do. And it is just such a night as that night was. Everything so miserable, outside and in. The wind moaning and the rain drizzling out there, and in here the fire not burning, but just smouldering and smoking as if it was low-sperreted too!" sighed Miss Tabby.
"I'll soon raise the fire's sperrits," said the old lady, briskly rising and seizing the poker, and giving the logs a good lunge and lift, that sent up a shower of sparks and a sheet of flame, lighting the whole room with the brightness of day.
The effect was as transient as it was brilliant, however. The sparks expired in their upward flight, and the flame died down again, leaving the logs simmering as before.
"There, now, you see how it is, mother. The very fire feels the time," sighed Miss Tabby.
"Fiddle! it is only because the wood is green. I'll cure that too. I'll make lame-legged Joe gather a heap of pine cones, that will burn the greenest wood as ever sulked on a hearth," chirped the blithe old lady, as she set the poker in its place.
And then she went to the back door of the back room, and standing on the covered porch, called out:
"Joe, Joe, fetch in a basket of pine cones to make the fire burn!"