"Oh, dear," sighed Allee. "We swep" that walk all for nothing!"
But Peace"s bright eyes had caught sight of a tall, wooden bucket on the counter, and now she demanded, "Is that oysters?"
"Yes, jimdandies."
"That"s next best to chicken. I"ll take a quarter"s worth of them. We will have a Thanksgiving after all, Allee."
Bearing the precious burden carefully in her arms, Peace was hurrying down the street toward home, followed by the happy Allee trailing the two old brooms, when they were halted by an excited, boyish voice, screaming l.u.s.tily, "Peace, oh Peace! Wait a minute! I"ve got something for you."
She stopped short in the snow and waited impatiently for the boy to overtake her, more interested in her bucket of oysters than in the prospect of a gift from him; but as he drew near, she saw he carried two white, furry bundles, and her eyes grew bright with antic.i.p.ation.
"Surely not your bunnies, Bryan?" she gasped.
"Yep! We are going to move back to the city on Monday, and papa said I must leave these here. They will starve with no one to take care of them, and you always thought they were so pretty, I decided to give them to you--that is, if you want them."
"Want them? Oh, Bryan, they are the cutest things! I like pets and never have had any all of my very own, "cept the chicken Mr. Hardman stole.
Give one to Allee, and I will carry the other. Tuck your broom under your arm, Allee, and give me mine. There! I"m awful glad you brought them to us, Bryan. We will take real good care of them."
Once more the sisters trudged on their way, happily excited and eager to show their new possessions to the family at home.
"Gobble, gobble, gobble!"
Allee screamed, dropped her broom and almost let go of the little white rabbit in her fear. "Oh, Peace, he"s after us again and we can"t run!"
"Maybe he won"t touch us if we don"t look at him," began the older sister; but the old gobbler, with ruffled feathers and wattles flaming, came straight toward them, and Peace stopped with a jerk.
"Drop your bunny in my skirt, Allee, grab that broom and hit the gobbler over the head. Mr. Hardman said to do that whenever he bothered us and he would soon get tired of it." As she spoke she gathered her skirt up ap.r.o.n-fashion, and thrust both rabbits within the folds, while Allee s.n.a.t.c.hed up the broom, according to instructions, and made ready for the attack.
"Gobble, gobble, gobble!" The enemy advanced rapidly, but before he could strike either child the blue-eyed baby let the hard-wood stick fly with all her might over the fierce old head, and without another sound the monstrous bird crumpled up in the snow.
"Mercy!" screamed Peace. "You"ve killed him! There, don"t cry! Hold your coat for the rabbits while I tote this thing up to Hardman"s house. I told you to hit him, but Mr. Hardman told us, too."
Laying down her own burdens, she seized the heavy turkey by the neck and dragged it up the path to the door of the green house. "Here"s your old bird," she chattered, when Mr. Hartman answered her knock. "He"ll never gobble again! We hit him over the head, just as you told us to, and he laid right down and died. But we never meant to kill him. If you chop his head off right away, he will be good to eat yet, for we just now finished him. "F I had the money, I"d pay for him, just so"s we could have a Thanksgiving dinner over at our house, but I spent all I had for oysters, and, besides, I s"pose likely you would charge more"n a quarter for him. You told us to hit him, you know."
With never a word of reply, the dazed man dragged the carca.s.s into the house and shut the door, leaving Peace glaring indignantly after him.
"Well, that"s manners," she finally sputtered, and stamped angrily away to help Allee home with her load.
"Here are some oysters," she announced, depositing the paper bucket on the kitchen table.
"We earned them shoveling Judge Abbott"s porches off. And here are Bryan Tenney"s rabbits. He has given them to us for keeps."
"Well, you can march them straight back," declared Faith, with energy.
"Where do you expect to keep rabbits on this place?"
"In a box of hay in the barn. We may keep them, mayn"t we, Gail?"
"They will die of cold," protested Faith.
"We won"t let them. There are lots of gunny sacks we can cover over the box until it gets warmer."
"They will dig the whole farm up and spoil the garden when spring comes."
Gail was perplexed. How could she refuse the children"s eager eyes? Yet clearly they could not keep the little animals. There were scarcely enough vegetables in the cellar to last the family until the winter months were over, let alone feeding a pair of hungry rabbits.
While she hesitated, Hope entered the room, and with a cry of rapture, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up one pink-nosed bunny and hid her face in its fur, exclaiming, "Oh, you darlings! Are they yours, Peace? We will fix up that old, big box in Black Prince"s stall and they will be as cosy as babies. What shall you call them?"
"Wink.u.m and Blink.u.m," was the prompt answer. "Their noses are never still. Shall we fix up the box right now?" The four younger sisters gathered up the rabbits and departed for the barn. The question was settled to their satisfaction, at least.
In the meantime, at the Hartman house the gentle little wife was busily plucking the mammoth gobbler, while Mr. Hartman stood idly by the kitchen window, gazing out into the winter sunshine. But his thoughts were not idle, and when at length the great bird was stripped clean, he turned to the woman and said, "What are we going to do with the thing?
If they had just killed it before we dressed one for ourselves--"
"Better take it over to them. It"s too late to dispose of it to the butcher, and I am afraid they will have a pretty slim dinner. Mrs.
Grinnell thinks they are badly pinched for money."
"Sho, now, Myra Ann! It"s just because they don"t know how to manage.
They"ve got one of the best farms in this part of the country."
"It"s mortgaged, and you have the mortgage."
"Yes, but with proper handling they ought to clear that off easily."
"They had to sell Black Prince--"
"And got a fancy price for him, too. That alone would pretty nearly have paid the mortgage. If they are hard up, it"s their own fault."
"Mrs. Grinnell is in position to know if anyone does. The mother"s sickness must have been terribly costly, and now they are orphans. They are in a bad way, I feel sure, and this turkey would come in mighty handy."
He offered no further arguments, but a few moments later, when Gail answered a knock at the kitchen door, she found their neighbor standing there with the turkey in his arms. Almost too surprised to understand, she accepted his offering, and he was gone before she could stammer out her thanks.
Then how they bustled in the little brown house, preparing such a dinner as they had seldom eaten before, oyster dressing, creamed carrots, mashed potatoes, gravy, and--the height of extravagance--cake and custard, such as only Faith could make. Oh, but that was a dinner!
Nevertheless, as the six hungry girls gathered around the table full of dainties their faces were sober at the sight of the two empty chairs in the corner, and each heart bled afresh for the mother who had left them only a few short months before.
Seeing the shadow in the eyes of her sisters, and feeling depressed by the abrupt silence, Gail sought to make the sun shine again by remarking, "I am thankful for so many things, I hardly know which to put first; but I think I will call it friends. That will include them all."
Faith dropped her eyes and made no attempt to speak.
Perceiving this, Hope, with hardly a pause, began, "I am thankful for this beautiful day. The world was so spotless and white when we woke, it seemed like angels" wings had covered up all the sin."
"I"m thankful we have enough to eat and wear," said Cherry. "There is a family with seven children just moved into that tumble-down old house on the next road, and they look starved to death, to say nothing of the rags and patches they wear."
Peace was busily engaged in "being thankful over a drumstick," but as Cherry ceased speaking, she lifted her round eyes from her plate, and stopped chewing long enough to say, "I am thankful my nose doesn"t twitch all the time like my rabbit"s, that my ears don"t grow out of the top of my head, and that I don"t have to hop with both feet wherever I want to go."
Five knives and forks fell to the table with a clatter, five napkins flew simultaneously to as many faces, and five voices shrieked out a chorus of mirth.
It was Thanksgiving Day at the little brown house.