“Do you intend to take holiday to-morrow, Mrs. Lease?”
“Me take holiday! what is there in to-morrow to take holiday for?” returned Mrs. Lease.
“I shall,” continued Harriet, not answering the question: “I have been used to it in France. All Saints’ Day is a grand holiday there; we go to church in our best clothes, and pay visits afterwards. Following it, like a dark shadow, comes the gloomy Jour des Morts.”
“The what?” cried Mrs. Lease, bending her ear.
“The day of the dead. All Souls’ Day. But you English don’t go to the cemeteries to pray.”
Mrs. Lease put on her spectacles, which lay upon the open pages of the Bible, and stared at Harriet. Perhaps she thought they might help her to understand. The girl laughed.
“On All Souls’ Day, whether it be wet or dry, the French cemeteries are full of kneeling women draped in black; all praying for the repose of their dead relatives, after the manner of the Roman Catholics.”
Daniel Ferrar, who had not spoken a word since she came in, but sat with his face to the fire, turned and looked at her. Upon which she tossed back her head and her pink ribbons, and smiled till all her teeth were seen. Good teeth they were. As to reverence in her tone, there was none.
“I have seen them kneeling when the slosh and wet have been ankle-deep. Did you ever see a ghost?” added she, with energy. “The French believe that the spirits of the dead come abroad on the night of All Saints’ Day. You’d scarcely get a French woman to go out of her house after dark. It is their chief superstition.”
“What is the superstition?” questioned Mrs. Lease.