She stood silent, then said, with sudden resolution:
“Liddy, you go straight to your duties and never answer your mistress back again, not on Thanksgiving day nor on any other day.”
The rooms filled. Brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, came, and some of the guests offered to help the women folks about.
The hand of the new brass clock was moving around toward 12. A savory odor filled the room. Little Liddy flitted to and fro, handling hot dishes briskly so as not to get “scalded.”
Those who were voluntarily helping the women folks carried hot dishes in wrong directions. For twenty minutes or more everything went wrong in the usual way of the country kitchen at that hour of the day.
There was a jingle in the new brass clock. Then it struck, and the farmer raised his hand, and everybody stood still.
Twelve!
“Now, if you will all be seated at the tables,” said Farmer Overfield, “I will supplicate a blessing.”
He did. Prayer has a long journey around the world on Thanksgiving day. He arrived at last at “all who have gone astray but are still a part of the visible creation”—his mind wavered here—“grant ’em all repentance and make us charitable,” he said in a lower voice.