“Cookies,” she said. “I thought Norah wouldn’t mind. I only took three.”
“And both her skirt pockets are stuffed full of nuts!” announced Meg, who had been examining them. “Salted nuts. I’ll bet you didn’t ask Mother if you could have them, either.”
“Well, I was going to afterward,” said Dot, half crying. “I didn’t eat a single thing. I was saving them for folks to have this afternoon. So there!”
“Run along in and get ready for dinner,” directed Father Blossom, trying not to look at Sam, lest he laugh. “Next time, ask Mother, Dot; you are old enough to know you mustn’t help yourself to food without asking.”
Mother Blossom sighed a little over the stuffed pockets, for Dot’s dresses seemed to be always in need of cleaning and repairing. But she said that she knew her little girl had not meant to be careless and that no one should be scolded on Thanksgiving Day.
“And I don’t believe even you will be hungry after you eat the dinner Norah has for us,” said Mother Blossom smiling as she tied Dot’s pretty new red hair-ribbon on the thick dark hair. “There is the bell—suppose you run down, Dot, and that will save Norah a trip to the door.”
Dot, looking very neat and pretty in her red and white dotted challis dress, danced downstairs to let Miss Florence in. Dot had such dark hair and eyes that all shades of red just suited her. Meg’s frock was blue and white challis and her hair-ribbon matched her blue eyes.
By the time old Mrs. Jordan and the lame Paul had arrived and had warmed their cold hands at the blazing wood fire in the living-room, Norah said dinner was ready. And such a dinner as it was! Aunt Polly had sent the turkey from Brookside Farm and most of the vegetables, too! And the currant jelly was the reddest you ever saw, and certainly the pumpkin pie was the yellowest! Pale little Miss Florence, who sewed all day long, day after day, week after week, for the people in Oak Hill and who had no family of her own to love her, said she had never tasted such delicious stuffing as came out of the big brown turkey, and as for Mrs. Jordan and Paul they ate as though a good dinner was a solemn and important affair, and perhaps it was to them.
“It isn’t snowing, is it, Daddy?” said Twaddles, the moment dinner was over.
“No, I shouldn’t say it was actually snowing,” answered Father Blossom teasingly, “but it looks very much to me as though it might snow. The paper said snow today and those clouds are pretty heavy.”