"They were just like real, fresh peaches," said the people; and I suppose they thought so.
Marion was not able to attend the distribution, as she had hoped, but she heard all the particulars from the boys. She was keeping herself very quiet that she might be able to go to dinner next day.
On Thanksgiving morning a short service was held in the chapel, which everybody attended. According to custom, Mr. Van Alstine made a short address recounting the principal events of the past year in the little settlement. Henry played the harmonium, and there was some excellent singing, and then a general handshaking all round.
Then everybody went to dinner, and had, as Frank said, as good a time as they knew how. Twenty persons sat down to dinner in the long dining-room, all members of one family save Doctor and Mrs. Fenn, whose two soldier-boys were away, one in New Mexico, the other in Montana.
The dinner was nice enough to put an end to all Aunt Baby's long-cherished misgivings as to Eiley's housekeeping qualifications. The feast indeed seemed perilously extravagant to her Scotch-New England notions of thrift and economy. There was so much silver and glass and china and napery, all of the best, and such rich cakes and puddings and preserved fruits and jugs of solid cream, that she confided to Christian that she hoped they were not living beyond their means.
"Oh, I don't believe they are," said Christian, who had seen entertainments on a good deal larger scale than her sister. "I don't believe Mr. Van Alstine is the man to go beyond his means."
Marion was able to sit up to dinner, and afterward to lie back in her reclining-chair in the drawing-room, listening now to the conversation between the two doctors, now to Aunt Baby's home gossip about the farm and the village and old friends and schoolmates, and again to her grandfather telling Scotch stories to the children.
"It has been a lovely Thanksgiving," said Betsy when the party broke up; "hasn't it, Marion?"
And Aunt Baby, listening for the answer, was glad to hear Marion say, with a heartiness which there was no mistaking,—
"Yes, indeed; I think it has been the pleasantest Thanksgiving I ever spent in my life."