“Dolls that I make for the orphan children,” Elizabeth said without looking up from her labor with her bread. She was removing each loaf, buttering its top, and then replacing it in the oven. “My deceased mother, God rest her soul, taught me how to make them.”
“Why does this poor creature have a needle rending its heart?” Mercy asked.
“The costume is unfinished,” Elizabeth said. “I am forever misplacing the needle and they are so dear.”
Mercy replaced the doll and unconsciously wiped her hands. Anything that suggested magic and the occult made her uncomfortable. Leaving the dolls, she turned to the children, and after watching them for a moment asked Elizabeth what they were doing.
“It’s a trick my mother taught me,” Elizabeth said. She slipped the last loaf of bread back into the oven. “It’s a way of divining the future by interpreting the shapes of egg white dropped into the water.”
“Bid them to stop immediately,” Mercy said with alarm.
Elizabeth looked up from her work and eyed her visitor. “But why?” she asked.
“It is white magic,” Mercy admonished.
“It is harmless fun,” Elizabeth said. “It is merely something for the children to do while they are confined by such a winter. My sister and I did it many times to try to learn the trade of our future husbands.” Elizabeth laughed. “Of course it never told me I’d marry a shipowner and move to Salem. I thought I was to be a poor farmer’s wife.”
“White magic breeds black magic,” Mercy said. “And black magic is abhorrent to God. It is the devil’s work.”
“It never hurt my sister or myself,” Elizabeth said. “Nor my mother, for that matter.”
“Your mother’s dead,” Mercy said sternly.
“Yes, but-”
“It is sorcery,” Mercy continued. Blood rose to her cheeks. “No sorcery is harmless. And remember the bad times we are experiencing with the war and with the pox in Boston only last year. Just last sabbath Reverend Parris’ sermon told us that these horrid problems are occurring because people have not been keeping the covenant with God by allowing laxity in religious observance.”