"For the land's sake!" cried Abby Rock, dropping her dish-cloth into the sink, "what are you talking about, child?"
"But, the horns!" Marie answered innocently. "When a person has the evil eye, you not make at him the horns, so way?" and she held out the index and little finger of her right hand, bending the other fingers down. "So!" she said; "when they so are held, the evil eye has no power. What you do here to stop him?"
"We don't believe in any such a thing!" Abby replied, with, some severity. "Why, Maree, them's all the same as heathen notions, like witchcraft and such. We don't hold by none of those things in this country at all, and I guess you'd better not talk about 'em."
Marie's eyes opened wide. "But," she said, "c'est une chose,—it is a thing that all know. As for Le Boss, you know—listen!" she came nearer to Abby, and lowered her voice. "One night Old Billy forgot to do, I know not what, but somesing. So when Le Boss found it out, he look at him, so,"—drawing her brows down and frowning horribly, with the effect of looking like an enraged kitten,—"and say noasing at all. You see?"
"Well," replied Abby. "I suppose mebbe he thought it was an accident, and might have happened to any one."
"Not—at—all!" cried Marie, with dramatic emphasis, throwing out her hand with a solemn gesture. "What happen that same night? Old Billy fall down the bank and break his leg!" She paused, and nodded like a little mandarin, to point the moral of her tale.
"Maree!" remonstrated Abby Rock, "don't tell me you believe such foolishness as that! He'd have fallen down all the same if nobody had looked anigh him. Why, good land! I never heard of such notions."
"So it is!" Marie insisted. "Le Boss look at him, and he break his leg. I see the break! Anozer day," she continued, "Coco, he is a boy that makes tumble, and he was hungry, and he took a don't from the table to eat it—"
"Took a what?" asked Abby.
"A don't, what you call. Round, wiz a hole to put your finger!" explained Marie. "Only in America they make zem. Not of such things in Bretagne, never. Coco took the don't, and Le Boss catch him, and look at him again, so! Well, yes! in two hour he is sick, that boy, and after zat for a week. A-a-a-h! yes, Le Boss! only at me he not dare to look, for I have the charm, and he know that, and he is afraid. Aha, yes, he is afraid of Marie too, when he wish to make devil work.