A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. l6l 



spurious sort of successor to the vanishing faith of 

 the cottagers ; people nail horseshoes over their 

 smart stable doors, and respect numbers and times 

 with a good deal of uncomfortable solicitude. Mrs. 

 Kitty agrees that it is most absurd ; she never cares 

 the least about thirteen at table ; but then you can 

 never know what other people think about it. And 

 May marriages ? suggests the Rector. Oh, of course, 

 thafs a very different thing, Mrs. Kitty thinks. Every- 

 body knows it is really unlucky; she has known 

 quite a number of people who did it, and were all 

 most unfortunate. In fact, she considers it really 

 tempting Providence. 



"That feeling," the Rector says, "has of course 

 been attributed to the pre-Reformation regard for 

 the month of Mary ; but that can hardly have any- 

 thing to do with the short-coating of babies, which 

 the cottage people won't think of in May. My wife 

 finds that scruple very common : she had an argument 

 this spring with Mrs. Wickens, who utterly refused 

 to change her child's frocks till the end of the month. 

 She wouldn't mind for herself; but she knew it 

 would bring trouble to the child : no, she didn't mean 

 bronchitis, but real trouble ; she'd known plenty of 

 people do it, and not one but what was sorry after- 

 wards. So she waited for a lucky east wind on the first 



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