"Go away! Go home!" he spluttered. "I don't enjoy your company."
Simon Screecher started homewards at once.
"Farmyard manners!" he muttered. "I declare, I wish Cousin Solomon hadn't eaten those two mice and those three frogs and those four spiders and those five[p. 104] grasshoppers to-night. When he's well fed he's always good-natured. If he had been hungry he'd have been in a terrible temper. And he'd have fought this Turkey bird until there was nothing left of him but his tail feathers."
Turkey Proudfoot never knew what a narrow escape he had. As soon as it began to grow light he dropped down out of the oak tree and hurried home, for he didn't want to miss the breakfast that Farmer Green always gave him.
Along in the fall, breakfasts always seemed to be bigger.
XXII
CRANBERRY SAUCE
"Ho, hum!" old Mr. Crow yawned. He had stopped to talk with Turkey Proudfoot in the cornfield. It was fall; and the shocks of corn stood on every hand like great fat scarecrows, with fat yellow pumpkins lying at their feet, as if the scarecrows' heads had fallen off.