"Meaning that you'll feel about until you find a stalk of cabbage and pull it up."
"I don't like cabbage," complained Tom Watkins.
"You'll like this because it will give you a lot of information. If it's long or short or fat or thin your future husband or wife will correspond to it."
"That's the most unromantic thing I ever heard," exclaimed Margaret Hancock. "I certainly hope my future husband won't be as fat as a cabbage!"
"You can tell how great a fortune he's going to have—or she—by the amount of earth that clings to the stem."
"Watch me pull mine so g-e-n-t-l-y that not a grain of sand slips off," said Tom.
"If you've got courage enough to bite the stem you can find out with perfect accuracy whether your beloved will have a sweet disposition or the opposite."
"In any case he'd have a disposition like a cabbage," insisted Margaret, who did not like cabbage any more than Tom did.
"Ready?" Roger marshalled his little army. "Two by two. Doctor and Ethel Blue, Tom and Dorothy, James and Helen, George and Ethel Brown, Gregory and Margaret. Come on, Della," and he led the way through the kitchen where Mary and the cook were hugely entertained by the procession.
With cries and stumbling they went forth into the cabbage patch, where they all possessed themselves of stalks which they straightway brought in to the light of the jack-o'-lanterns to interpret.