“You’re sure it won’t get burned, Cavvy?” added McBride, who had charge of the onions.
“What do you think we’re sitting here watching it for?” retorted Cavanaugh with some heat. “You look after those onions and don’t bother about the turkey. I’ll bet you haven’t made the cream sauce yet.”
“Rit’s mixing it up now.”
“Well, he wants to get some speed on. This bird will be dished up in twenty minutes sharp, and we want all the other grub ready by that time. How are the potatoes, Red?”
Flushed but smiling, Red Garrity withdrew the fork he had just plunged into the bubbling pail. “Just about done,” he answered.
“Better set ’em off to one side, then, and about five minutes before we’re ready you can peel them and put ’em on a plate. When he gets out of there, Chick, you slick on the plum pudding to heat.”
To most of them that twenty minutes dragged interminably, but like all other similar periods of waiting, it came to an end at last. When all the other accessories of the banquet had been placed on the carefully set table, Cavanaugh and Haddon together lifted the oven from the fire to the hearth and removed the steaming fowl to a platter placed in readiness. There was a moment of gasping suspense as Cavvy brushed one hand against the hot metal and nearly dropped his end of the load. But he hung on, and the calamity was averted at the expense of a red ridge across three fingers. A moment later the turkey was laid triumphantly on the board and the boys scrambled to their places, with sighs of mingled relief and anticipation.
The latter were more than justified. No turkey, it seemed to them, had ever been so plump and juicy, so tender, so crisply brown, so succulent of dressing. The creamed onions were delicious, the potatoes done to a turn, the brown gravy plentiful and thick. They ate and ate, and passed their plates for more. When the first pangs of hunger had been assuaged, jesting and banter began to run up and down the table, compliments phrased in the inverse to terms of boyhood were showered upon the cooks, who tried not to look too proud as they themselves enthusiastically consumed the products of their skill.
John Farren’s enjoyment of the meal was utter and complete. The food really was delicious, but better than any material pleasure was the mental relaxation that had come to him. His troubles had quite vanished, his laugh rang clear and unrestrained, and he joined in the joking give and take with all the mischievous abandon of a boy.
So the feast passed on to its predestined end. And when the turkey lay dismembered on its platter, looking like the yawning wreck of some stranded derelict, when the plum pudding had vanished save for a few crumbs and every other dish was scraped quite clean, the boys arose with sighs of repletion and gathered around the fireplace. Fresh logs were piled upon the embers, skins dragged up, and they crowded in a close semi-circle before the blaze with Farren in the center.