"Not, of course, that it always follows," said Prissie. "On Easter holidays a bird used to come and tap constantly at our drawing-room window at home. It was always doing it. Of course that means 'a death in the family,' but we all kept absolutely hearty and well. Not even a third cousin once removed has died, and it's more than two years ago. Mother says it was probably catching insects on the glass. She laughs at omens!" "I always double my thumb inside my fist if I walk under a ladder," volunteered Noreen. "Well, it _is_ unlucky to go under a ladder," declared Phillida. "You may get a pot of paint dropped on your head! I saw that happen once to a poor lady: it simply turned upside down on her, and deluged her hat and face and everything with dark green paint. She had to go into a shop to be wiped. It must have been awful for her, and for her clothes as well. I've never forgotten it." "What could we do on Hallowe'en?" asked Edith. "Well, we must try to think it out, and make some plans." From the recesses of their memories the girls raked up every superstition of which they had ever heard. These had to be divided into the possible and the impossible. There are limits of liberty in a girls' school, and it was manifestly infeasible, as well as very chilly, to attempt to stray out alone at the stroke of twelve, robed merely in a nightgown, and fetch three pails of water to place by one's bedside. Gowan's north country recipe for divination was equally impracticable--to go out at midnight, and "dip your smock in a south-running spring where the lairds' lands meet," then hang it to dry before the fire. They discussed it quite seriously, however, in all its various aspects. "To begin with, what exactly is a smock?" asked Carmel. Everybody had a hazy notion, but nobody was quite sure about it. "Usen't farm laborers to wear them once?" suggested Lilias. "But Shakespeare says, "'When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When ring the woods with rooks and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks,'" objected Prissie. "Was it an upper or an under garment?" questioned Noreen. "I'm sure I don't know. I don't fancy we any of us possess 'smocks'!" "Then we certainly can't go and soak them in a spring!" "And there is no 'laird' here, and even if you count an ordinary owner of property as a 'laird,' you don't know where the boundaries are!" "No, that floors us completely!" An expedition to the cellar for apples would be an equally hopeless quest, for all the harvest of the orchard had been stored in the loft, and was under lock and key. Some minor experiments, however, might be tried with apple skins, so they determined to pocket their next dessert, and keep it till the magic hour of divination arrived. Hot chestnuts would be a distinct possibility, and a little coaxing at head-quarters would doubtless result in Jones the gardener bringing a bag full for them from Glazebrook.