That evening Amanda and Philip were restless.

"What ails you two?" demanded Millie. "Bet you're up to some tricks
again, by the gigglin' of you and the rutchin' around you're doin'! I
just bet you're up to something," she grumbled, but her eyes twinkled.

"Nothin' ails us," declared Phil. "We just feel like laughin'."

"Ach," said Aunt Rebecca, "this dumb laughin' is all for nothin'.
Anyhow, you better not laugh too much, for you got to cry as much as
you laugh before you die."

"Then I'll have to cry oceans!" Amanda admitted. "There'll be another
Niagara Falls, right here in Lancaster County, I'm thinkin'."

"Ach," said Millie, "that's just another of them old superstitions."

"Yes," Aunt Rebecca said solemnly, "nobody believes them no more. But
it's a lot of truth in 'em just the same. I often took notice that as
high as the spiders build their webs in August so high will the snow be
that winter. Nowadays people don't study the almanac or look for signs.
Young ones is by far too smart. The farmers plant their seeds any time
now, beans and peas in the Posey Woman sign and then they wonder why
they get only flowers 'stead of peas and beans. They take up red beets
in the wrong sign and wonder why the beets cook up stringy. The women
make sauerkraut in Gallas week and wonder why it's bitter. I could tell
them what's the matter! There's more to them old women's signs than
most people know. I never yet heard a dog cry at night that I didn't
hear of some one I know dyin' soon after. I wouldn't open an umbrella