“Hooray, then!” screamed Polly, “and, Bensie, I’ll make the crust awfully thick, and it’ll be ’most all drumsticks,” and she danced a whirligig in the middle of the old kitchen floor.
“Queer kind of crust, I should think; drumstick crust,” retorted Ben.
“Oh, you Benny goose!” flung back Polly, as she went up to hug her mother’s neck; “Mammy, when is Thanksgiving? Is it more than six weeks, anyway, before it comes?”
“Let me see,” said Mrs. Pepper, laying down her work. “Oh, yes, it’s July now. Yes, you’ll have to wait four months. But perhaps you can’t have it at all, for if the chicken belongs to anybody round here you must give it back. Let me see it, Ben,” and his mother grasped the leg of the bird, which all this time was squawking dismally, and amid the groans from Ben, and the wails from Polly, she repeated: “yes, if you can find out where it belongs, you’ve got to carry it back.”
“What, and have no chicken pie!” exclaimed Polly. “Why, we can’t, Mother, we’ve waited so long for our pie, and I’ve never tasted one. We can’t give it back!”
“For shame, Polly,” said Mrs. Pepper, sternly, “the chicken doesn’t belong to you, and I should rather you’d never taste a morsel of chicken pie than to get one underhand. But put him away now, children,” she said in a kinder tone, as she saw the sorrowful faces before her; “he can sleep in the box the gray goose had in the shed, for to-night anyway, and then in the morning we’ll send him home if he’s got any to go to.”
“And we won’t have anything left but the old gray goose,” mourned Polly; “I wish the old thing was dead, I do!”
“Why, Polly Pepper! And then we wouldn’t have anything,” said Ben, preparing to take his chicken out to its quarters for the night.
“Well, I don’t care,” said Polly, as she followed; “I’m tired of seeing her round, anyway.”
Now, all this time, the younger Peppers were away by chance from the old kitchen, or there would have been more of an uproar still, over the advent of the chicken. The two small boys were busy on the edge of Farmer Brown’s cow-yard, where in a dirty pool of water they were having the highest glee over the sailing of a boat, composed of one of Polly’s old shoes with a rag for a sail. Well was it for the chicken that they were missing at the reception, else it would have been almost torn to death with delight. And Sophronia, or Phronsie, had been put to bed early this afternoon, so she was tucked away fast asleep under the gay, patched bedquilt of the old crib.