"My son, my son," pleaded Mrs. Lyman, turning round from her turkey, and shaking her darning-needle at him, "you wouldn't try to read in all this confusion? Wait till we get a little over our hurry. Go to the end-cupboard, and fetch me a couple of good, stout strings; I want these turkeys all ready to tie on the nails."
She was going to roast them before the fire. That was the way they cooked turkeys in old times.
"And, Betsey," said Mrs. Lyman, "you may as well go to work on the doughnuts. Make half a bushel or more."
"What about the riz bread?" said Betsey.
"I should think a dozen loaves would be enough," replied Mrs. Lyman, who was now beginning to make a suet pudding.
You see they meant to have plenty of food, for beside their own large family, they expected twenty or thirty guests to dinner day after to-morrow.
"O, mother!" exclaimed Mary, "I'm afraid you're not making that pudding thick enough. Siller Noonin says the pudding-stick ought to stand alone."
"Priscilla is thinking of the old Connecticut Blue Laws about mush," replied Mrs. Lyman, smiling; "we don't mind the blue laws up here in Maine. And this isn't mush, either; it's suet pudding.—Solomon, my son, you may go into the shed-chamber, and bring me a bag of hops; we must have some beer starting."
Betsey swung the frying-kettle on the crane, and had just turned away, when the baby crept up, and tipped over sick George's basin of pussy-willow and cider, which was steeping in one corner of the fireplace. There was no harm done, only Job lost his patience, and cried, and for five minutes there was a perfect Bedlam of baby-screams, chopping-knives, and mortar-pestles, and in the midst of it, the sound of the hired men winnowing grain in the barn.
But there could hardly be too much noise for Patty. I presume she was never happier in her life than on the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving; but Wednesday came, and it rained in torrents.