“Whew! Where are you going to get flowers?” demanded practical Ben.
“I don’t care; we must!” persisted Polly. “Folks always have them at a party, and we’ll get them someway; you’ll see.”
But although Ben always stanchly pinned his faith to whatever Polly said, on this occasion he only gave a little sniff. It was too good to be true.
So time passed on. The chick was fed, often by the scrimping of Polly’s, or Ben’s, or Joel’s, or David’s, or little Phronsie’s plate, or, as it frequently happened, by all of them, each stealing out secretly to do it. Consequently he grew and throve famously, his thin frame filling out, until he enjoyed his new quarters so well that he confided in a burst of delight one day to the old gray goose his pleasure and delight at the attention he was receiving.
“Humph!” said the old goose, with a knowing look, “you don’t know as much as you will in a short time, say in November.”
Now what these mysterious words of the cross old goose meant, or even what November was, the chicken was unable to tell, having never in his short life seen a November; so he went to work, digging and scratching over the old stony ground, and soon forgot all about it.
But as time passed on, the hints of the goose grew broader and deeper, till at last the shanghai, politely but plainly one day, asked her to explain and tell him exactly what she did mean. This was the week before Thanksgiving, a cold, dreary afternoon, and the two inhabitants of the old worn shed were perched on a rail shivering with the cold, and engaged in a conversation that caused Shanghai to shiver even more with fright. Inside the house, the fun had commenced.
The plans were all made, it is true, weeks before; but there remained that mysterious consulting and “talking over” which is half the pleasure, and at last it was decided that Ben could actually go up to the store to-night when he carried home Mr. Atkins’s coat, and buy half a pound of raisins for the pudding. For Mrs. Pepper, seeing the joy and excitement of the children, scrimped and twisted her scanty earnings till she could contribute to the feast, and “you shall have the pudding, children,” an announcement which was received with a perfect babel of delight. And Joel stood on his head in the corner, and waved his feet in the air, unable to express his joy in any other appropriate way.
Now, nothing remained but to kill the black chicken, which Ben was to do on the morrow morning, for Polly declared, as that would be Saturday, it must be done that day, “and then we shan’t have to think it’s got to be done, over Sunday, you know, Bensie, dear.”
The feathers, David said, must be for a pillow to put at the mother’s back when she sewed; a proposition that made Mrs. Pepper beam an appreciative smile, for Davie was “Mother’s boy.”