[CHAPTER VI—Thanksgiving.]
With the happier outlook resulting from Constance’s success in her candy-making, it had been deemed advisable to send Jean to the private school from which Eleanor had graduated. Consequently, that autumn Jean had been enrolled among its pupils, and her place in the public school at which she and Constance had been pupils knew her no more, and Jean was much divided in her mind as to whether she was made happier or otherwise by the change. In the old school were many friends whom she loved dearly, and whom she missed out of her daily life. In the new one was her boon companion, Amy Fletcher, and also a number of the girls whom she constantly met in the homes of her mother’s friends. But Jean was a loyal little soul, and her interest in her fellow-beings a lively one. She could hardly have been her mother’s daughter otherwise. Naturally in the public school were many children from the less well-to-do families of Riveredge, and not a few from those in very straitened circumstances. Among the latter were three girls very near Jean’s own age. They were sisters, and were ambitious to complete the grammar school course, in order to fit themselves for some employment. There were other children older and other children younger; in fact, there seemed to be no end to the children in the Hodgeson family, a new one arriving upon the scene with the punctuality of clockwork. This fact had always disturbed Jean greatly.
“If there only would come an end to the Hodgesons,” she lamented to her mother. “The trouble is, we no sooner get settled down and think we’ve reached the end than we have to begin all over again. Those babies keep things terribly stirred up. Don’t you think you could make Mrs. Hodgeson understand that she could get on with fewer of them, Mother? You see, the clothes never do hold out, and as for that last baby carriage you managed to get for her, why, it’s just a wreck already. The other day, when I went by there on my way to the Irving School, I saw Billy Hodgeson riding the newest and the next newest, and the third newest in it, and the third newest had a puppy in his arms. No carriage could stand all that, could it?”
“I’m afraid not, dear. Perhaps we had better ask some other friends if they have a carriage they no longer need.”
“Oh, no, don’t! Please, don’t! If you do, Mrs. Hodgeson will think she’s got to get a brand new baby to put into it, for the old babies wouldn’t match, you know. No, please, don’t.”
“Very well; we must let them get on with the old ones, both babies and carriage, I see,” Mrs. Carruth answered, much amused.
“Yes, I really would; but here is something that’s bothering me,” and Jean snuggled close into the encircling arms of the big chair in which she and her mother sat for this twilight hour conference.
“What are they going to do when Thanksgiving Day comes? No turkey on earth would be big enough to go ’round, even if they could buy one, which I don’t believe they can. I was talking to Mrs. Hodgeson about it just the other day, and she said she was afeered her man couldna buy one nohow this year; they was so terrible intortionate in the prices,” concluded Jean, lapsing unconsciously into the slipshod Mrs. Hodgeson’s vernacular.
“I think she must have meant extortionate,” corrected Mrs. Carruth.
“Perhaps she did; I don’t know. But I’ll bet five cents they won’t have a thing when the day comes around, and I think that’s awful.”