It was not long before Aunt Betty came to her help, and such a bountiful dinner as she had prepared made Marion wish over and over again that Helen, alone in that large academy building, could have been there to share it with her. 157
“Thanksgiving night!” Marion kept saying this to herself over and over again, as she sat alone with Aunt Betty over the kitchen stove.
A little oblong light stand was drawn up between them, holding a small kerosene lamp. Not a book but the Bible, and a copy of the Farmer’s Almanac suspended by a string from the corner of the mantel, was to be seen. Marion, having heard so much of the intelligence of the New Hampshire farmers, supposed of course there would be a library in the house, and had brought only her Greek Tragedy with her. This she did not dare open again, so there she sat, Aunt Betty, not having yet entirely recovered from the effects of her cold ride, alternately nodding and rousing herself to a vain effort to keep her eyes open. And all the time the storm was increasing, the wind rocking the house with its rough blasts, until it seemed to utter loud groans, and the sharp cold snapping and cracking the shaking timbers with short volleys of sound like gun-shots. Frightened mice scurried about in the low roof over the kitchen; and rats, lonely rats, seeking company, came to the top of the cellar stairs, pushing the door open with their pointed noses, and blinking in beseechingly with their big round eyes.
Marion, who had never heard anything of the kind before, was really frightened.
“O Aunt Betty,” she said piteously, “do, please, wake up and tell me if there are ghosts here!”
Aunt Betty just stared at her; she was wide awake now. 158
“There are such dreadful noises, and such mice, and—and rats!”
“Nonsense!” said Aunt Betty, listening. “Don’t be a coward! It’s only the storm.”
“It’s fearful! What can we do?”
“Pop corn!”