Meanwhile, Aunt Tryphosa, with her lantern in one hand and a bundle of red something in the other, had repaired to the hen-house which was partitioned off from the woodshed.
Had either one of them happened to look out down the Mountain-road just at this time, they would have seen a strange sight.
Along the white roadway, sparkling in the light of the rising moon, came six silent forms in Indian file. Two were harnessed to small loaded sledges. Sometimes, all six gesticulated wildly; at others, the two who brought up the rear of the file silently danced and capered back and forth across the narrow way. They drew near the house on the woodshed side; the first two freed themselves from the sledges, and left them under one of the unlighted windows. Then all six, attracted by the glimmer of the lantern shining from the one small aperture of the hen-house, stole up noiselessly and looked in.
What they saw proved too much for their risibles, and suppressed giggles and snickers and choking laughter nearly betrayed their presence to the old dame within.
On the low roost sat Aunt Tryphosa's noble Plymouth Rock rooster, and beside him, in an orderly row, her ten hens. Every hen had on her head a tiny flannel hood--some were red, some were white--the strings knotted firmly under their bills by Aunt Tryphosa's old fingers trembling with the cold.
She was just blanketing the rooster, who submitted with a meekness which proved undeniably that he was under petticoat government, for all the airs he gave himself with his wives. The funny, little, hooded heads twisting and turning, the "aks" and "oks" which accompanied Aunt Tryphosa in her labor of love, the wild stretching and flapping of wings, all furnished a scene never to be forgotten by the six pairs of laughing eyes that beheld it.
The moment the old dame took up her lantern, the spectators sped around the corner. Under the dark windows they noiselessly unloaded the wood-sleds, and silently carried bundles, baskets, and burlap-bags around to the front door.
At last they had fairly barricaded it, and the tallest of the party, after fastening a piece of paper in the Christmas wreath that Maria-Ann had hung up only a half-hour before, motioned to the others to step up to the kitchen window.
Just one glimpse they had through the thickening frost and the wreathing green: a glimpse of the kitchen table, the steaming apples, the pot of red geranium, the two cups of smoking spearmint tea, and of two heads--the one white, the other brown--bent low over folded, toil-worn hands in the reverent attitude for the evening "grace."
"For what we are now about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful," said Aunt Tryphosa, in a quavering voice.