"Dear Ellen!" she sighed, "there is no plate for her now,—no chair." Then, as she remembered an absent one, dearer far than Ellen, she thought, "I'll make believe he's here," and seeking Mrs. Howland, who was busy with her turkey, she said: "May I put a plate for Walter? It will please him when he hears of it."
"Yes, child," was the ready answer, and Jessie was hastening off, when a feeble voice from the kitchen corner where the deacon sat, called her back:
"Jessie," the old man said. "Put Seth's arm-chair next to mine. It is the last Thanksgiving I shall ever see, and I would fancy him with me once more," and as Jessie turned toward the place where the leathern chair stood, she heard the words:
"God send him back,—God send him back."
"It is the deacon's wish," she whispered to her father, who, with Mrs. Bellenger, was also spending Thanksgiving at the farm-house, and who looked up surprised, as Jessie dragged from its accustomed post, the ponderous arm-chair, and wheeling it into the other room, placed it to the deacon's right.
The dinner was ready at last, and Mrs. Howland was only waiting for the oysters to boil, before she served them up, when Jessie gave a scream of joy, and dropping the dish of cranberries she held, ran off into the pantry, where, as Aunt Debby affirmed, she hid herself in the closet, though from what she was hiding it were difficult to tell. There was surely nothing appalling in the sight of Walter, who, alighting from the village omnibus, now stood upon the threshold, with Captain Murdock.
They had stayed all night in the city, where Walter had learned that Mr. Graham, Jessie and his grandmother, had gone to Deerwood to spend Thanksgiving Day.
"We shall be there just in time," he said to his father, when at an early hour they took their seat in the cars; but his father paid little heed, so intent was he upon noting the changes which more than twenty years had wrought in the localities with which he was once familiar.
As the day wore on, and he drew near to Deerwood, he leaned back in his seat, faint and sick with the crowd of memories which came rushing over him.
"Deerwood!" shouted the conductor, and looking from the window, he could scarcely believe it possible that this flourishing village was the same he had known among the hills. When he went away one spire alone pointed heavenward, now he counted four, while in the faces of some who greeted Walter again he saw the looks of those who had been boys with him, but who were fathers now to these grown-up young men.