Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know Part 22

"And here's something written," said Mrs. Waddle, taking a paper from a pocket at the back of the purse.

"Read it, Ma--out loud! _I_ don't care," said Obie generously.

So Ma read it in a voice that trembled a little:

MY DEAR NEPHEW:--If I count rightly, it is thirteen years since your good mother labelled you Obadiah. I'm not near enough to give you thirteen slaps--I wish I were--so I send you thirteen dollars, and one to grow on. Never mind returning the dollar with the hole in it--keep it for your grandchildren to cut their teeth on. Give my love to your parents and little sister; and if you look the purse through closely, I think you will find something of interest to your mother. It is about time she paid our old Vermont a visit.

Be a good boy.

Your affectionate uncle,

OBADIAH BROWN.

"Oh, that blessed brother!" cried Mrs. Waddle, wiping her eyes with her ap.r.o.n.

Obie seized the purse and examined it on all sides. It was a very wizard of a purse, for another little flat pocket was found in its inmost centre, and from it Obie drew out another bit of folded paper and opened it.

"Why, it's a check!" shouted Mr. Waddle. "A check for you, Mary, for--two--hundred--dollars! My! There's a brother for you!"

"Oh, not two _hundred_--it must be twenty--it can't be--" faltered Mrs. Waddle, wiping her eyes to look at the paper.

Then she gave a little cry and fell to hugging all her family. "We can all go back--we can go next week!" and she almost danced up and down on the unresponsive clay floor.

"I owe you two cents, Pa, and I'll pay it back to you just as soon as I can get a dollar changed," said Obadiah proudly, fingering the s.h.i.+ning coins.

"How's that, Bubby?"

Then Obadiah explained.

"I hope you didn't complain, Obie," said his mother, her happy face clouding.

"Well, I told him about the drought and the cyclone. I guess if I was a near relation I wouldn't call that complaining. And then I asked him if he wouldn't swap dollars with me, so I could have one without a hole in it to get something for Thanks--"

Mr. Waddle broke in with a shout of laughter, and Mrs. Waddle kissed her son once more, and laughed, too, although her eyes were full of tears. And then Obadiah knew everything was all right.

"We can have Thanksgiving now, can't we, Ma?" he asked. "It's so near; and I'm going to get all the things. We'll have chicken pie--_tame_ chicken pie--and plum pudding--and b.u.t.ter--and cream for the coffee--and cranberries--and lump sugar--and pumpkin pie--and--"

"Oh, me wants supper!" exclaimed Sis. And then they laughed again, and fell upon the cooling corn-bread and mola.s.ses and melancholy bits of fried pork and the thin ghost of tea as if they were already engaged in a feast of Thanksgiving. And so they were.

THE WHITE TURKEY'S WING[17]

BY SOPHIE SWETT.

Priscilla, the big white hen turkey, deserved a better fate than to be eaten on Thanksgiving Day, and Minty and Jason contrived to save her.

Mary Ellen was coming home from her school teaching at the Falls, and Nahum from 'tending in Blodgett's store at Edom Four Corners, and Uncle and Aunt Piper with Mirandy and Augustus and the twins were coming from Juniper Hill, and there was every prospect of as merry a Thanksgiving as one could wish to see. And Thanksgivings were always merry at the Kittredge farm on Red Hill. Uncle Kittredge might be a trifle over thrifty--a leetle nigh, his neighbours called him--but there was no stinting at Thanksgiving, and when a boy is accustomed to perpetual corn-bread and sausages, he knows how to appreciate unlimited turkey and plum pudding; and when he is used to gloomy evenings, in which Uncle Kittredge holds the one feeble kerosene lamp between himself and a newspaper, Aunt Kittredge knits in silent meditation on blue yarn stockings, he knows how good it is to have the house filled with lights and people, jolly games going on in the parlour, and candy-pulling in the kitchen. All these delights were directly before Jason Kittredge as he dangled his legs from the stone wall and whittled away at the skewers which Clorinda, the "hired girl," had demanded of him, and yet his heart was as heavy as lead.

[Footnote 17: From _Harper's Young People_, November 22, 1892.]

He did not even look up when his sister Minty came up the hill toward him. He knew it was Minty, because she was hop-skipping and humming, and he knew that Aunt Kittredge had sent her to Mrs. Deacon Preble's to get a recipe for snow pudding; she had said she "must have something real stylish, because she had invited the new minister and his daughter to dinner."

"Oh, Jason, don't you wish it was always going to be Thanksgiving Day 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 crus.h.i.+ngly.

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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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 acc.u.mulation 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.