"I guess we won't suffer for breakfast," said Amanda, looking down kindly at the little girl. "I don't carry back the milk nights this time of year. Any that's left I just set in the pantry and there is what was left from supper this blessed minute; butter, too, and cream, plenty for breakfast. You just rest your mind on that score."
"But," said Edna, "you will want a whole lot of things for the Thanksgiving cooking and what will you do with them all locked up?"
Ira laughed. "'Twouldn't be such an awful job to lift the door from its hinges, and if a body was right spry he could climb in at the window after he'd prised it open and the things could be handed out. Besides we've got all the morning's milk and there'll be the night's milk and to-morrow's milk, so I don't see that we shan't get along first-rate. There is more than one way out of that trouble, ain't there, 'Mandy?"
"I should say so. Wait till the sun's real high and I guess we'll find the key fast enough," she said to Edna. "Now, you stay right here and don't go running about in the cold; you'll be down sick traipsing about in the wet grass, and then where will your Thanksgiving be?"
Thus warned, Edna was content to stay in the kitchen into which the morning light was beginning to creep and which was already warm from the big stove. In a few minutes, Reliance appeared from the next room where she had been setting the table. She was much astonished to learn that Edna had been down before her. "What in the world did you get up so soon for?" she asked.
"To find the key," Edna answered, and then told her all about the search, ending up with, "You haven't seen anything of it, have you, Reliance?"
Reliance's face broadened into a smile, as for answer she went behind the kitchen door and produced the key from its nail, holding it up to view.
"Why, where in the world did you get it?" inquired Edna in a tone of surprise. "It wasn't on the nail when I looked there for it a little while ago."
"You dropped it on the door-mat last evening," Reliance told her. "I found it there and slipped it into the pocket of my apron, and this morning when I went to get my apron, there it was so I just hung it up where it belonged."