Such boxes and barrels as came down from Brookside Farm, packed by Jud and his father, and reminding the four little Blossoms of the 177 good times they had had that summer. There were red apples and green apples, yellow pumpkins, potatoes, turnips and beautiful crisp celery, black walnuts and butternuts, wonderful for cake and candy and what Dot called “plain eating,” and, most wonderful of all, two great plump turkeys.
“Those are some you saw running around, Twaddles,” Aunt Polly told him as he helped her unpack the box. “Remember how they looked? You thought they were chickens.”
The morning before Thanksgiving Day fresh eggs and butter came by parcels post.
“If you’d only sent a tablecloth and a few forks, Polly,” laughed Mother Blossom, “I shouldn’t have had a thing to do about getting dinner.”
Meg and Bobby couldn’t think much about the dinner. Wasn’t this the day they were to recite?
“Wouldn’t it be too awful,” said Meg, at the breakfast table, “if when I got up on the platform I should forget every word?”
“But you won’t,” Mother Blossom assured her. 178 “You’ll remember every word. See if you don’t. You come home to lunch, don’t you, children, and get dressed?”
“Yes. And then we have to be back by half-past one,” said Bobby importantly. “The exercises begin at two. Where’s my bag of apples?”
The children of the Oak Hill school every year brought gifts of food to the Thanksgiving Day exercises which were afterward distributed among the poor families of the town. Bobby took apples this year and Meg was to take two jars of home-made preserves.
They hurried through the morning at school, rushed home and found a devoted family on hand to help them dress.