after to-morrow?" Minty continued her hop-skipping; she went to and fro
before the dejected figure on the wall. Minty was tall for twelve, and
she had a very high forehead, which made Aunt Kittredge think that she
was going to be "smart." Aunt Kittredge made her comb her hair straight
back from the high forehead, and fasten it with a round comb; not a
vestige of hair showed under Minty's blue hood, and her forehead looked
bleak and cold, and her pale blue eyes were watery, and her new teeth
were large and overlapped each other; but Aunt Kittredge said it was no
matter, if she was only good and "smart."
"Why, Jason, is anything the matter?" Minty stopped, breathless, and
the joy faded out of her face. Jason continued to whittle in gloomy
silence. His hands were almost purple with cold, and the wind flapped
his large pantaloons--they were Uncle Kittredge's old ones, and Aunt
Kittredge never thought it worth the while to consider the fit if they
were turned up so that he could walk in them.
"You don't care because the new minister and his daughter are coming?"
pursued Minty. Jason's tastes, as she well knew, did not incline to
ministers and schoolmasters as companions in merrymaking. "She's a big
girl, almost sixteen, and she will go with Mary Ellen, and we shall
have Mirandy and Augustus and the twins; and the Sedgell girls and
Nehemiah Ham are coming in the evening, and we shall have such fun, and
such lots to eat!"
"That's just like you. You're friv'lous. You don't know what an awful
hard world it is. You haven't got a realizing sense," said Jason
crushingly.
This last accusation was one with which Aunt Kittredge was accustomed
to overwhelm Clorinda when she burned the pies or wore her best
bonnet to evening meeting. Minty's face grew so long that it looked
like the reflection of a face in a spoon, and the tears came into her
eyes. It must be a hard world, since Jason found it so. He was much
stouter-hearted than she; his round, snub-nosed, freckled face was
generally as cheerful as the sunshine. Jason had his troubles--Minty
well knew what they were--but he bore them manfully. He didn't like
to have Clorinda use his hens' eggs when he was saving them to sell,
and perhaps it was even more trying to be at school when the eggs man
came around, and have Aunt Kittredge sell his eggs and put the money
into her pocket. Jason wished to go into business for himself, and he
had a high opinion of the poultry business for a beginning. Cyrus,
their "hired man," had once lived with a man at North Edom who made
fabulous sums by raising poultry. But Aunt Kittredge's peculiar views
of the rights of boys interfered with his accumulation of the necessary
capital. All these troubles Jason bore bravely. It must be some great
misfortune that caused him to look so utterly despairing, and to accuse
her of such dreadful things, thought poor Minty.
Jason took pity on her woful face. "P'raps you're not so much to blame,
Mint. You don't know," he said, in a somewhat softened tone. "It's Aunt
Kittredge."
Minty heaved a long, long sigh. It generally _was_ Aunt Kittredge.
"She's told Cyrus to kill the--the white turkey!" continued Jason, with
almost a break in his voice.
"To kill Priscilla!" gasped Minty. "She couldn't--she wouldn't! Oh,
Jason, Cyrus won't do it, will he?"
"Hasn't he got to if she says so?" demanded Jason grimly.
"But Priscilla is yours," said Minty stoutly.
"She says she only let me call her mine. Just as if I didn't save
her out of that weak brood when all the rest were killed by the
thunderstorm! And brought her up in cotton behind the kitchen stove,
no matter how much Clorinda scolded! And found her nest with thirty-one
eggs in it in the old pine stump! And she knows me and follows me
round."
"I shouldn't think Aunt Kittredge would want to," said Minty
reflectively.
"She wants a big turkey, because the minister and his daughter are
coming to dinner, and she doesn't want to have one of the young ones
killed, because she is too stin----"
"I wouldn't care if I were you. After all, Priscilla is only a turkey,"
said Minty, attempting to be cheerful.
But this well-meant effort at consolation aroused Jason's wrath.
"That's just like a girl!" he cried. "What do you care if you only have
blue beads and lots of candy?"
Poor Minty's face lengthened again, and her jaw fell. "There's my two
dollars and thirty cents, Jason," she said anxiously.
Jason started; a ray of hope flushed his freckled face.
"We can buy a big turkey over at Jonas Hicks's for all that money,"
continued Minty. And then she drew nearer to Jason, and added a
thrilling whisper, "And we can hide Priscilla!"
Jason stared at her in amazement. He had never expected Minty to come
to the front in an emergency. Perhaps the high forehead meant something
after all. "_She_'ll be after you about the money, you know," he said,
with a significant nod toward the house.
"It's my own. I earned it picking berries and weeding old Mrs.
Jackman's garden. It's in my bank, and the bank won't open till there's
five dollars in it."
Jason's face darkened.
"But we can smash it," said Minty calmly.
_Certainly_ the high forehead meant something.
Priscilla was hidden. The "smashing" was done in extreme privacy behind
the stone wall of the pasture. Cyrus was bound over to secrecy, as was
also Jonas Hicks, who, after some haggling, sold them his finest turkey
for two dollars and thirty cents.
"Cyrus is gettin' real handy and accommodatin'," said Clorinda the next
morning, when they were all in the kitchen, and Jason, ignobly arrayed
in Clorinda's kitchen-belle apron, was chopping, and Minty was seeding
raisins. "I expected nothin' but what I'd got to pick the white turkey,
and he's fetched her in all picked and drawed."
"She don't weigh quite so much as I expected," said Uncle Kittredge, as
he suspended the turkey on the hook of the old steelyards.
Jason and Minty slyly exchanged anxious glances. Neither of them had
looked at the turkey, and Minty's face was suffused with red even to
the roots of her tow-coloured hair.
Mary Ellen and Nahum came that night, and bright and early on the
morning of Thanksgiving Day came Uncle and Aunt Piper with Mirandy and
Augustus and the twins, and the house was full of noise and jollity.
Jason was obliged to go to church in the morning with the grown people,
but Minty stayed at home to help Clorinda, and after much manoeuvring
she found an opportunity to run down to the shanty in the logging road
and feed the white turkey. The new minister and his daughter came to
dinner, and Jason and Minty were glad that the children had seats at
the far end of the table. The minister's daughter was sixteen, and
looked very stylish, and Aunt Kittredge said she was glad enough that
they had the snow pudding, and that she had asked Aunt Piper to bring
her sauce dishes.
It had begun to be very merry at the far end of the table, in a quiet
way, for Aunt Kittredge's stern eye wandered constantly in that
direction, and Jason and Minty had almost forgotten that there were
trials and difficulties in life, when suddenly Aunt Piper's loud voice
sounded across the table, striking terror to their souls:
"You don't say that this is the white turkey? Seems kind of a pity to
kill her, she was so handsome. But she eats real well. Now, you mustn't
forget to let me take a wing home to Sabriny. You know you always
promised her a wing for her hat when the white turkey was killed."
Sabriny was Aunt Piper's niece, who had been left at home to keep house.
"Sure enough I did," said Aunt Kittredge. "Jason, you go out to the
barn and get Cyrus to give you one of the white turkey's wings; and
Minty, you wrap it up nice, so it will be handy for your aunt to
carry. Go as soon as you've ate your dinner, so's to have it ready, for
Uncle Piper has got to get home before sundown."
"Yes'm," answered Jason hoarsely, without lifting his eyes from his
plate. He could scarcely eat another mouthful, and Minty found it
unexpectedly easy to obey Aunt Kittredge's injunction to decline snow
pudding lest there should not be "enough to go round."
"What are you going to do?" asked Minty, overtaking Jason, as he walked
dejectedly through the woodshed as soon as dinner was over.
"I don't know; run away and be a cowboy like Hiram Trickey, I guess."
Minty's heart gave a great throb. Hiram Trickey had sent home a
photograph, which showed him to have become very like the picture of a
pirate in Cyrus's old book, with pistols and a dirk at his belt.
"Jason, the new minister's daughter has got a white gull's wing on her
hat, and--it's up in the spare chamber on the bed, and I don't think
Sabriny would ever know the difference."
Jason stared in mild-eyed speechless wonder. Minty had never shown
herself a leading spirit before.
"It will be dark before the minister's daughter goes, and there's a
veil over the hat, and if we put a little something white on it I'm
sure she won't notice. And when she does notice she won't know what
became of it. And we can save up and buy her another gull's wing."
"Sabriny'll know," said Jason, but there was an accent of hope in his
voice.
"They don't have turkeys, and they know that Priscilla wasn't a common
turkey; perhaps they won't know the difference," said Minty. "Anyway,
it will give us time to get Priscilla out of the way. If Aunt Kittredge
finds out, she will have her killed right away."
"You go and get the wing off the minister's daughter's hat, Mint,"
directed Jason firmly.
Minty worked with trembling fingers in the chilly seclusion of the
spare chamber, but she made a neat package. And she stuck on to the hat
in place of the wing some feathers from the white rooster.
There was an awful moment as Uncle and Aunt Piper were leaving.
"Just let me see whether he's got a real handsome wing," said Aunt
Kittredge, taking the package which Minty had put into Aunt Piper's
hand.
"Malachi is in considerable of a hurry, and they've done it up so
nice," said Aunt Piper. "There! I 'most forgot my sauce dishes, and
Sabriny's going to have company to-morrow!"
Minty drew a long breath of relief as the carriage disappeared down the
lane, and Jason privately confided to her his opinion that she was "an
orfle smart girl."
There was another dreadful moment when the minister's daughter went
home. They had played games until a very late hour, for Corinna, and
she dressed so hurriedly that she did not observe that anything had
happened to her hat, but as she went down the garden walk Jason and
Minty saw in the moonlight the rooster's feathers blowing from it.
The next morning, in the privacy afforded by the great woodpile, to
which Jason had gone to chop his daily stint, the children debated the
advisability of committing the white turkey to the care of Lot Rankin,
who lived with his widowed mother on the edge of the woods.
"It's hard to get a chance to feed her," said Jason, "and she may
squawk."
"Lot Rankin may tell," suggested Minty. And she heaved a great sigh.
Conspiracy came hard to Minty.
Just then the voice of the new minister's daughter came to their ears.
She was talking with Aunt Kittredge on the other side of the woodpile.
"There was a high wind last night when I went home, and I suppose it
blew away. I am very sorry to lose it, because it was so pretty, and it
was a present, too," she said.
"Maybe the children have found it; they're round everywhere," said Aunt
Kittredge. And then she called shrilly to Jason.
Minty shrank down in a little heap behind a huge log as Jason stepped
bravely out from behind the woodpile, and answered promptly that he had
not seen the gull's wing. That was literally true; but how _she_ was
going to answer, Minty did not know.
It was so great a relief that tears sprang to Minty's eyes when, after
a little more conversation, the minister's daughter went away. Aunt
Kittredge had taken it for granted that, as she remarked, "if one of
them young ones didn't know anything about it the other didn't."
Minty felt her burden of guilt to be greater than she could bear.
And there was no way in which she could earn money enough to buy the
minister's daughter a new feather until berries were ripe and the weeds
grew in old Mrs. Jackman's garden. Minty racked her brains to think of
something she could give the minister's daughter to ease her troubled
conscience. There was her Bunker Hill monument, made of shells, her
most precious treasure; she would gladly have parted with even that,
but it stood upon the table in the parlour, and Aunt Kittredge would
discover so soon that it had gone. And Aunt Kittredge was quite
capable of asking the minister's daughter to return it. Minty felt,
despairingly, that this atonement was impossible.
But suddenly a bright idea struck her. The feather on her summer Sunday
hat! It was blue--it had been white originally, but Aunt Kittredge
had thriftily had it dyed when it became soiled. Blue would be very
becoming to the minister's daughter, and perhaps she would like it as
well as her gull's wing. There was another sly visit to the chilly
spare chamber. Minty took the summer Sunday hat from its bandbox in
the closet, and carefully abstracted the blue feather. It was slightly
faded, and there were some traces of the wetting it had received in
a thunderstorm in spite of the handkerchief which Aunt Kittredge
carefully pinned over it; but Minty thought it still a very beautiful
feather. She put it into a little pasteboard box, wrote the minister's
daughter's name on it, placed it on her doorstep at dusk, rang the
bell, and ran away.
It was nearly a week before she could find this opportunity to present
the feather, for Aunt Kittredge didn't allow her to go out after
dark; and in all that time they had not been able to negotiate with
Lot Rankin, for Lot had the mumps on both sides at once, and could
not be seen. But the very next day after the minister's daughter
received her feather--as if things were all coming right, thought
Minty hopefully--Uncle Kittredge sent her down to Lot Rankin's to find
out when he would be strong enough to help Cyrus in the logging camp;
and Jason gave her many charges concerning the contract she was to
make with Lot. But as she was going out of the house, there stood the
minister's daughter in the doorway, talking with Aunt Kittredge.
"I shouldn't have known where it came from if Miss Plympton, the
milliner, hadn't happened to come in," the young girl was saying. "She
said at once, 'It's Minty Kittredge's feather. I had it dyed for her
last summer, and there's the little tag from the dye-house on it now.'
I can't think why she sent it to me."
Aunt Kittredge turned to the shrinking figure behind her, holding the
blue feather accusingly in her hand.
"Araminta Kittredge, what does this mean?" she demanded sternly.
"I--I--she felt so bad about her gull's wing, and--and----" A rising
sob fairly choked Minty.
"Please don't scold her. I'm sure she can explain," pleaded the
minister's daughter.
"It's my duty to find out just what this means," said Aunt Kittredge
severely. "I never heard of a child doing such a high-handed thing! You
can do your errand now, because your uncle wants you to, but when you
come back I shall have a settlement with you."
Poor Minty! She ran fast, never looking back, although the minister's
daughter called to her in kindliest tones.
There was no hope of keeping a secret from Aunt Kittredge when once
she had discovered that there was one. The only chance of saving
Priscilla's life lay in persuading Lot Rankin to care for and conceal
her.
But, alas! she found that Lot was not to be persuaded. He was going
into the woods to work, and his mother was "set against turkeys."
Moreover, she was "so lonesome most of the time that when folks _did_
come along she told 'em all she knew."
Jason, who had been very anxious, met her at the corner. Perhaps it was
not to be wondered at that Jason was somewhat cross and unreasonable.
He said only a girl would be so foolish as to send that feather to the
minister's daughter. Girls were all silly, even those who had high
foreheads, and he would never trust one again. He hoped she was going
to have sense enough not to tell, no matter what Aunt Kittredge did.
Poor Minty felt herself to be quite unequal to resisting Aunt
Kittredge, but she swallowed a lump in her throat and said firmly that
she would try to have sense enough.
As they passed the blacksmith's shop, Liphlet, Uncle Piper's man,
called out to them: "Mebbe I shan't have time to go up to your house.
The blacksmith is sick, so I had to come over here to get the mare
shod, and I wish you'd tell your aunt that Sabriny says 'twan't no
turkey's wing that she sent her: 'twas some kind of a sea-bird's wing,
and it come off of somebody's bunnit, and she's a-goin' to fetch it
back!"
Minty and Jason answered not a word, but as they went on they looked at
each other despairingly.
"We should have been found out anyway," said Minty.
Her pitifully white face seemed to touch Jason and arouse a spark of
manly courage in his bosom.
"I'll stand by you, Mint, feather and all. You can't help being a
girl," he said magnanimously. "And I won't run away to be a cowboy like
Hiram Trickey."
Minty gave him a little grateful glance, but she could not speak. It
did not seem so dreadful now about Hiram Trickey. She wished that a
girl could run away to be a cowboy.
As they slowly and dejectedly drew near the house, they saw a horse and
a farm wagon at the door, and through the window they discovered that
Uncle and Aunt Kittredge, Clorinda, and Cyrus were all in the kitchen.
There was a visitor. Here was at least a slight reprieve. They went
around through the woodshed; it seemed advisable to approach Aunt
Kittredge with caution, even in the presence of a visitor.
"Well, I must say I'm consid'able disappointed," the visitor was
saying, as they softly opened the door. He was a bluff, burly man, who
sat with his tall whip between his knees. "I ought to 'a' stopped when
I see her out there top of the stone wall the last time I come by--the
handsomest turkey cretur I ever did see, and I've been in the poultry
business this twenty years. I knew in a minute she belonged to that
breed that old Mis' Joskins had; she fetched 'em from York State. She
moved away before I knew it, and carried 'em all with her."
"I bought some eggs of her, and 'most all of 'em hatched, but that
white turkey was the only one that lived," said Aunt Kittredge. "I
declare if I'd known she was anything more'n common, and worthy of
havin' her picture in a book----"
"You'd ought to have known it, Maria!" said Uncle Kittredge testily. "I
wa'n't for havin' her killed, and you'd ought to have heard to me!"
"I was calc'latin' to hev her picter right in the front of my new
poultry book," continued the visitor, whom the children now recognized
as the distinguished poultry dealer of North Edom for whom Cyrus had
once worked. "And I was going to have printed under it, 'From the farm
of Abner Kittredge, Esq., Corinna.' Be kind of a boom for you 'n'
Corinna, too--see? And if you didn't want to sell her right out, I was
calc'latin' to make you a handsome offer for all the eggs she laid."
"There! Now you see what you've done, Maria! I declare I wouldn't
gredge givin' a twenty dollar bill to fetch that white turkey back!"
exclaimed Uncle Kittredge.
"Oh, oh! Uncle Kittredge!" Minty broke away from Jason, who would have
held her back, not feeling sure that it was quite time to speak, and
rushed into the room. "You needn't give twenty dollars! Priscilla is
down in the little shanty in the logging wood! We saved her--Jason
and I--and we bought a turkey of Jonas Hicks instead. I paid with my
own money, Aunt Kittredge! And then I--I took the gull's wing off the
minister's daughter's hat to send to Sabriny, and--and so that's why I
sent her the blue feather, and--and Sabriny's going to send the gull's
wing back----"
"Jason, you go and fetch that turkey home!" said Uncle Kittredge. "And,
Maria, don't you blame them children one mite!"
"I never heard of such high-handed doin's!" gasped Aunt Kittredge.
"I expect I shall have to send you children each a copy of my book with
the picter of that turkey in it," said the poultry dealer. "And maybe
the boy and I can make kind of a contract about eggs and chickens."
The minister's daughter wore her gull's wing to church the next Sunday,
and she privately confided to Minty that she "didn't blame her one
bit." Aunt Kittredge looked at Minty somewhat severely for several
days but only as she looked at her when she turned around in church or
fidgeted in the long prayer. And after the poultry book came out with
Priscilla's photograph as a frontispiece, and people began to make
pilgrimages to the Red Hill farm to see the poultry, she was heard to
say several times that "it was wonderful to see how a smart boy like
Jason could make turkey raising pay," and that "as for Minty, she
always knew that high forehead of hers wasn't for nothing."
FOOTNOTE:
[17] From _Harper's Young People_, November 22, 1892.
THE THANKSGIVING GOOSE[18]
BY FANNIE WILDER BROWN.
How a little boy learned to be thankful. A charming
story even though it _has_ a moral.
"BUT I don't like roast goose," said Guy, pouting. "I'd rather
have turkey. Turkey is best for Thanksgiving, anyway. Goose is for
Christmas."
Guy's mother did not answer. He watched her while she carefully wrote
G. T. W. on the corner of a pretty new red-bordered handkerchief. Five
others, all alike, and all marked alike, lay beside it. The initials
were his own.
"Why didn't you buy some blue ones? I'd rather have them different," he
said.
Mrs. Wright smiled a queer little smile, but did not answer. She
lighted a large lamp and held the marked corner of one of the
handkerchiefs against the hot chimney. The heat made the indelible ink
turn dark, although the writing had been so faint Guy hardly could see
it before.
"Oh, dear," he cried, "there's a little blot at the top of that T! I
don't want to carry a handkerchief that has a blot on it."
"Very well," said his mother. "I'll put them away, and you may carry
your old ones until you ask me to let you carry this one. I don't care
to furnish new things for a boy who doesn't appreciate them."
"I don't like old----"
"That'll do, Guy. Never mind the rest of the things that you don't
like. I want you to take this dollar down to Mrs. Burns. Tell her that
I shall have a day's work for her on Friday, and I thought she might
like to have part of the pay in advance to help make Thanksgiving with.
Please go now."
"But a dollar won't help much. She won't like that. She always acts
just as if she was as happy as anybody. I don't want to go there on
such an errand as that."
Mrs. Wright smiled again, but her tone was very grave.
"Mrs. Burns is 'as happy as anybody,' Guy, and she has the best-behaved
children in the neighbourhood. The little ones almost never cry, and I
never have seen the older ones quarrel. But there are eight children,
and Mr. Burns has only one arm, so he can't earn much money. Mrs. Burns
has to turn her hands to all sorts of things to keep the children
clothed and fed. She'll be thankful to get the dollar--you see if she
isn't! And tell her if she is making mince pies to sell this year, I'll
take three."
Guy walked very slowly down the street until he came to the little
house where the Burns family lived.
"I'd hate to live here," he thought. "I don't see where they all
sleep. My room isn't big enough, but I don't believe there's a room in
this house as big as mine. I shouldn't have a bit of fun, ever, if I
lived here. And I'd hate to have my mother make pies and send me about
to sell them."
Then he knocked on the front door, for there was no bell. No one came.
He could hear people talking in the distance, so he knew some of the
family were at home. Some one always was at home here to look after the
little children. He walked around to the kitchen door: it stood open.
The children were talking so fast they did not hear his knock.
They were very busy. Katie, the eleven-year-old, and Malcolm, ten,
Guy's age, were cutting citron into long, thin strips, piling it on a
big blue plate. Mary and James, the eight-year-old twins, were paring
apples with a paring machine. The long, curling skins fell in a large
stone jar standing on a clean paper, spread on the floor. Charlie, who
was only four years old, was watching to see that none of the parings
fell over the edge of the jar. Susan, who was seven, was putting
raisins, a few at a time, into a meat chopper screwed down on the
kitchen table. George, three years old, was turning the handle of the
chopper to grind the raisins. Baby Joe was creeping about the kitchen
floor after a kitten. Mrs. Burns was taking a great piece of meat from
a steaming kettle on the back of the stove. Every one was working,
except the baby and the kitten, but all seemed to be having a glorious
time. What they were saying seemed so funny it was some time before
Guy could understand it. At last he was sure it was some kind of a game.