“Jess Larue took those feathers?” Carrie repeated, when her mother told her. “I don’t see what on earth she wants them for! Why didn’t you make her tell you before you gave her the barrel?”
“I believe in minding my own affairs,” said Mrs. Pepper, tartly.
She kept a great many chickens and sold them dressed; that is, killed and with the feathers taken off. Her good feathers she saved for pillows, but the stuff that filled the barrel was down from young chickens and broken feathers that were of no use to her.
Jess rolled her barrel up to the side door of the house and reached the hall before Dora spied her.
“Where you going, Jess, with that dirty old barrel?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’m taking it up to my room,” replied Jess.
“What’s in it—let me look,” replied Dora. “Feathers! Jess, for goodness’ sake, roll that barrel outside, quick! If your mother was to catch you scattering those nasty little pin feathers all over the house, she’d tell you a thing or two!”
“I’m not going to scatter them,” Jess argued. “Help me carry the barrel up to my room, will you, Dora? I have to take it back.”
When Dora understood that the barrel was to go back to Mrs. Pepper, she was more determined than ever that Jess should not take it up to her room.
“I know exactly what you’d do, Jess,” Dora said. “You’d dump those feathers out on your bedroom floor and take the empty barrel back; and in less than five minutes, every rug and carpet in this house, to say nothing of the chairs and the sofas, would have pin feathers sticking in them.”