“Why, Maggy, dear, this is Hallow-Eve. Have you forgotten?”
“So it is!” cried Maggy, in return, clapping her hands together with girlish enthusiasm.
“Hallow-Eve!” chimed in Kate, the youngest of the three. “Oh, we must try sweethearts to-night!”
“Sweethearts!” said Mr. Wilmot, the father of the girls, in a grave voice. “Nonsense! Nonsense, child! What do you want to know about sweethearts?”
Kate slightly blushed, but her smile was so radiant, that it quickly extinguished the deeper hue that had come over her bright, young countenance. She did not, however, reply to her father’s question, but looked into the face of Aunt Edith for encouragement.
“Wait awhile, dear,” said Aunt Edith, “your father don’t understand these matters. But I was a young girl once, and know all about them.”
“Trying sweethearts! Why I thought that custom was peculiar only to the Scotch and Irish peasantry.”
Aunt Edith looked at me and smiled.
“In cities,” she replied, “these customs are hardly known, but here they have always prevailed among portions of the people. Halloween, though not kept with the formality attending the occasion in the rural districts of Ireland or Scotland, is yet remembered by hundreds of young maidens who live far away from the great towns, and who improve the occasion to get, if possible, a peep into futurity, and read therein an answer to their heart’s eager questions.”
“Can it really be,” said I, in return, “that superstition like this prevails in an age and among a people so enlightened. Fortune-tellers would find a rich harvest in these regions.”