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“And they went unto Huldah the
Prophetess and communed with her”

Huldah Rumford leaned from her bedroom window as she finished plaiting her hair.

The crowing of the white Brahma rooster had interrupted her toilet and she craned her neck impatiently until she discovered that he had come from the hen-yard in the rear and established himself on the doorsteps, from which dominating position he was announcing his message.

“That means company coming, and I hope it’s true,” she said to herself, as she looked absent-mindedly in the old-fashioned looking glass, with its picture of Washington crossing the Delaware.

Her thoughts were evidently wandering, for she took her petticoat from a hook in the closet and pulling it over her head found, when she searched for the buttons in the waistband, that she had it on wrong-side out.

“I don’t care!” she exclaimed, giving the unoffending garment an angry twitch, “but it does seem as if I was possessed! I can’t keep my mind on my clothes long enough to get them on straight! I turned my petticoat yesterday, in spite of knowing it brings bad luck, but to-day I just won’t take the chance.”

The pink calico morning dress went on without adventure. Then she carefully emptied the water from the wash-bowl into the jar, wiped it neatly and hung the towel to dry; straightened the photograph of her deceased father in its black-walnut frame; shook the feather bed and tightened a sagging cord under the cornhusk mattress; took the candlestick from the light-stand by her bedside and tripped down the attic stairs two at a time.

Huldah was seventeen, which is a good thing; she was bewitchingly pretty, which is a better thing; and she was in love, which is probably the best thing of all, making due allowance, of course, for the occasions in which it is the worst possible thing that can happen to anybody.

Mrs. Rumford was in the kitchen frying doughnuts for breakfast. She was a comfortable figure as she stood over the brimming “spider” with her three-pronged fork poised in the air. She turned the yellow rings in the hissing fat until they were nut-brown, then dropped them for a moment into a bowl of powdered sugar, from which they issued the most delicious conspirators against the human stomach that can be found in the catalogue of New England cookery.

The table was neatly laid near the screen door that opened from the kitchen into the apple-orchard. A pan of buttermilk biscuits was sitting on the back of the stove, and half a custard pie, left from the previous night’s supper, held the position of honor in front of Mrs. Rumford’s seat. If the pie had been cereal, the doughnuts omelette, and the saleratus biscuits leavened bread, the plot and the course of this tale might have been different; but that is neither here nor there.

“Did you hear the Brahma rooster crowing on the doorstep, mother?” asked Huldah.

“No; but I ain’t surprised, for I can’t seem to keep my dish-cloth in my hand this morning; if I’ve dropped it once I’ve dropped it a dozen times: there’s company coming, sure.”

“That rooster was crowin’ on the fence last time I seen him, and he’s up there ag’in now,” said little Jimmy Rumford, with the most offensive skepticism.

“What if he is?” asked his sister sharply. “That means fair weather, and don’t interfere with the sign of company coming; it makes it all the more certain.”

“I bet he ain’t crowin’ about Pitt Packard,” retorted Jimmy, with a large joy illuminating his sunburnt face. “Pitt ain’t comin’ home from Moderation this week; he’s gone to work on the covered bridge up there.”

Huldah’s face fell.

“I’d ought to have known better than to turn my white skirt yesterday,” she sighed. “I never knew it to fail bringing bad luck. I vow I’ll never do it again.”

“That’s one o’ the signs I haven’t got so much confidence in,” said Mrs. Rumford, skimming the cream from a pan of milk into the churn and putting the skimmed milk on the table. “It don’t come true with me more ‘n three times out o’ five, but there’s others that never fails. You jest hold on, Huldy; the dish-cloth and the rooster knows as much ’bout what’s goin’ to happen as your white petticoat does.”