Aunt Edith smiled, in her quiet, self-possessed way, as she replied—
“I hardly think, brother, you will find it any thing more serious than eating a salt egg on going to bed, or some trifling affair like that; for which I can readily excuse a young maiden.”
“To think they should be so weak as to believe in nonsense of this kind!” said the father. “I hoped that my daughters had better sense.”
“Don’t take the matter so seriously, brother,” replied Aunt Edith to this. “It has only been a little frolick.”
“It has been rather a serious one, I should think, to judge from the effects produced. Jane, I presume, is too much indisposed to get up; and I am sure both Maggy and Kate look as if they had been sick for a week.”
“They’ll all come out bright enough before noon. Don’t fear for that.”
The girls, however, were not themselves again during the whole day. Jane’s absence from the breakfast table was in consequence of a nervous headache, from which she suffered nearly all day. And Kate and Maggy continued to look thoughtful, and to keep as much away from the rest of the family as possible.
It out, before night, that each of the girls, on retiring at twelve o’clock, had eaten a “salt egg.” The consequence to Jane was a sick headache; and the others did not feel much better. As to their dreams, they wisely kept their own counsel. That these had some effect upon their spirits, was, no doubt correctly, inferred.
“That a young girl, after sitting up until twelve o’clock at night, thinking of a certain nice young man, and then eating half a cupfull of salt, should dream that she was thirsty, and that this certain young man came and offered her water to drink, is not a very wonderful occurrence, and might be accounted for on very natural principles.”
“Of course,” replied Aunt Edith, to whom the remark was made, as we sat, all but the girls, conversing before the parlor fire on the evening of that day. “And yet I have known of cases where the dreams that came were singularly prophetic. As for instance. A young friend of mine, when I was a girl, tried, though under engagement of marriage, this experiment. She dreamed that her lover came and offered her water, and that she declined taking it, which is considered an unfavorable omen. In a month afterward, although the time for the wedding was fixed, the young man deserted her for another.”