Poor Sally thought of nothing and dreamed of nothing all the week but the blue coat and the grey eyes.  She made a hundred blunders at her work.  She put her rennet into the butter-pan, and her skimming dish into the cheese-tub.  She gave the curds to the hogs, and put the whey into the vats.  She put her little knife out of her pocket, for fear it should cut love; and would not stay in the kitchen, if there was not an even number of people, lest it should break the charm.  She grew cold and mysterious in her behavior to faithful Jacob, whom she truly loved.  But the more she thought of the fortune-teller, the more she was convinced that brown hair and black eyes were not what she was fated to marry, and therefore, though she trembled to think it, Jacob could not be the man.

On Sunday she was too uneasy to go to church; for poor Sally had never been taught, that her being uneasy was only a fresh reason why she ought to go thither.  She spent the whole afternoon in her little garret, dressing in all her best.  First she put on her red ribbon, which she had bought at last Lammas fair; then she recollected that red was an unlucky color, and changed it for a blue ribbon, tied in a true lover’s knot; but suddenly calling to mind that poor Jacob had bought this knot for her of a pedlar at the door, and that she had promised to wear it for his sake, her heart smote her, and she laid it by, sighing to think she was not fated to marry the man who had given it to her.

When she had looked at herself twenty times in the glass—­for one vain action always brings on another—­she set off, trembling and quaking every step she went.  She walked eagerly towards the churchyard, not daring to look to the right or left, for fear she should spy Jacob, who would have offered to walk with her, and so have spoiled all.  As soon as she came within sight of the wall, she spied a man sitting upon it.  Her heart beat violently.  She looked again; but alas, the stranger not only had on a black coat, but neither hair nor eyes answered the description.  She now happened to cast her eyes on the church-clock, and found she was two hours before her time.  This was some comfort.  She walked away and got rid of the two hours as well as she could, paying great attention as she went not to walk over any straws which lay across, and carefully looking to see if there were never an old horseshoe in the way, that infallible symptom of good fortune.

While the clock was striking seven, she returned to the churchyard, and, O the wonderful power of fortune-tellers, there she saw him! there sat the very man:  his hair as light as flax, his eyes as blue as buttermilk, and his shoulders as round as a tub.  Every tittle agreed, to the very nosegay in his waistcoat buttonhole.  At first, indeed, she thought it had been sweet-briar, and glad to catch at a straw, whispered to herself, It is not he, and I shall marry Jacob still; but on looking again, she saw it was southernwood plain enough, and that of course all was over.  The man accosted her with some very nonsensical, but too acceptable compliments.  Sally was naturally a modest girl, and but for Rachel’s wicked arts, would not have had courage to talk with a strange man; but how could she resist her fate, you know?  After a little discourse, she asked him with a trembling heart, what might be his name.