“Well, now, I think Polly’s plan is a very good one,” said Mother Pepper, over in her corner. “You can’t get the chicken, and you must have your pie; it’s as good as commenced, and the old goose ought to be killed anyway; she’s getting so cross, it isn’t safe to have her around after she bit Sally Brown the other day. So, as Polly says, why not try it? There’ll be a pie anyway.”
“Oh, Mamsie!” cried Polly, flying over to her with rosy cheeks to throw her arms around her neck. “I’m so glad you think it’s right to try it,” smothering a sigh at thoughts of the pie they might have had.
“Indeed, I do, Polly,” said Mrs. Pepper, with a little pat on the brown head; “there, child, now run off to your work,” and she picked up her needle to make it fly faster than ever.
“It won’t be chicken pie,” said Joel, disconsolately, who had wiped his black eyes at these first signs of cheer.
“Well,” said Ben, stoutly, and swallowing hard, “if we can’t have chicken pie, why, we must take the next best, and that’s goose,” and he pretended to laugh heartily at his joke.
“And,” said Polly, running back to the little bunch of Peppers in the middle of the kitchen, for Davie wisely concluding since Mamsie thought Polly was right, everything was coming out well somehow, had hurried back to the others, “it’s all we’ve got left; but why didn’t the old goose run away, I wonder!”
The idea of the old gray goose running away, set them all into such a fit of laughter, that when they came out of it, the affair was as good as settled. The chicken pie was to be goose pie, and such a goose! The tables were turned decidedly; the old goose, huddling into the shed from the November rain and chuckling to herself, had called down on her own head a sure retribution.
The old gray goose was killed. Polly went bravely to work as if the pleasure of making the most beautiful chicken pie in all the world was before her. And the “children,” as Polly and Ben always called the three younger ones in the Pepper brood, laughed and sang and danced about, through all the preparations when they couldn’t help them forward, and almost forgot they had ever intended to have a chicken pie.
And they had a pudding on Thanksgiving Day. Oh, yes, and a famous one it was! And at the last minute, old Mrs. Beebe, whose husband kept a little shoe-shop in Badgertown Centre, stopped in their old wagon, with some beautiful asters.
“Here, children, ’s some posies for your table. I’ve got more’n I want; I’m real sorry you had such a time about your pie.” And afterward, in the midst of the festivities at home, she broke out, “I declare, I was ’most beat to see them little dears behave so nice, and flyin’ round pretendin’ they’d rather have a tough old goose than not.”