Dinner cheered him up still more. When the storm had abated, Mrs. Estel wrapped him up and sent him home in her sleigh, telling him that she wanted him to spend Thanksgiving Day with her. She thought she would know by that time whether she could take Robin or not. At any rate, she wanted him to come, and if he would tell Mr. Dearborn to bring her a turkey on his next market day, she would ask his permission.
All the way home Steven wondered nervously what the old people would say to him. He dreaded to see the familiar gate, and the ride came to an end so very soon. To his great relief he found that they had scarcely noticed his absence. Their only son and his family had come unexpectedly from the next State to stay over Thanksgiving, and everything else had been forgotten in their great surprise.
The days that followed were full of pleasant anticipations for the family. Steven went in and out among them, helping busily with the preparations, but strangely silent among all the merriment.
Mr. Dearborn took his son to town with him the next market day, and Steven was left at home to wait and wonder what message Mrs. Estel might send him.
He hung around until after his usual bedtime, on their return, but could not muster up courage to ask. The hope that had sprung up within him flickered a little fainter each new day, until it almost died out.
It was a happy group that gathered around the breakfast table early on Thanksgiving morning.
"All here but Rindy," said Mr. Dearborn, looking with smiling eyes from his wife to his youngest grandchild. "It's too bad she couldn't come, but Arad invited all his folks to spend the day there; so she had to give up and stay at home. Well, we're all alive and well, anyhow. That's my greatest cause for thankfulness. What's yours, Jane?" he asked, nodding towards his wife.
As the question passed around the table, Steven's thoughts went back to the year before, when their little family had all been together. He remembered how pretty his mother had looked that morning in her dark-blue dress. There was a bowl of yellow chrysanthemums blooming on the table, and a streak of sunshine, falling across them and on Robin's hair, seemed to turn them both to gold. Now he was all alone. The contrast was too painful. He slipped from the table unobserved, and stole noiselessly up the back stairs to his room. The little checked apron was hanging on a chair by the window. He sat down and laid his face against it, but his eyes were dry. He had not cried any since that first dreadful night.
There was such a lively clatter of dishes downstairs and babel of voices that he did not hear a sleigh drive up in the soft snow.
"Steven," called Mr. Dearborn from the foot of the stairs, "I promised Mrs. Estel to let you spend the day with her, but there was so much goin' on I plum forgot to tell you. You're to stay all night too, she says."