...Daddy's." first there was Halloween. People at school were talking about what they were going to be doing and Ruth stayed quiet, because her mother didn't approve of Halloween at all.

"It's a suspicious kind of a thing," she said. "More to do with the devil than holy things. I don't think it's a thing to be celebrating."

"Ah, sure, we'll have our own little party," Kitty-the-maid whispered. "There's no harm in it. We'll have a grand little Halloween this year, so we will."

Kitty-the-maid got a big turnip and cut the inside out of it, cut eyes and a square mouth in it. She put it on the bird-table outside in the Wild Garden and told Ruth she'd light a candle in it later. As soon as it was dark she hung an apple from a piece of string from a hook on the kitchen ceiling and put two of them in a basin of water, and Ruth got down on her knees and bit at them. You could push them over to the side of the basin to get a grip with your teeth. She gave Ruth sixpence for getting a big bite.

Then she began to melt the lead. She sat in front of the range with it and melted one little piece at a time and dropped them into the bucket of cold water. Most of it just turned into blobs, but one looked like a little shoe.

"Look at that, will yez? That means a dance for me, so it does. Micky'll be taking me to the dance on Saturday."

That wasn't very exciting because Kitty-the-maid went to a dance every Saturday night. Then Ruth's lead came up in the shape of a ring.

"Sure it would be you getting a ring, Ruth, and yez too young for it." Ruth knew Kitty would love to get a ring because she wanted to marry Mick and he had not asked her yet.

"Here, now, we'll do another one...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Quadrant
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