ary Ellen was coming home from her school teaching at the Falls, and Nahum from 'tending in Blodgett's store at Edom Four Corners, and Uncle and Aunt Piper with Mirandy and Augustus and the twins were coming from Juniper Hill, and there was every prospect of as merry a Thanksgiving as one could wish to see. And Thanksgivings were always merry at the Kittredge farm on Red Hill. Uncle Kittredge might be a trifle over thrifty—a leetle nigh, his neighbours called him—but there was no stinting at Thanksgiving, and when a boy is accustomed to perpetual corn-bread and sausages, he knows how to appreciate unlimited turkey and plum pudding; and when he is used to gloomy evenings, in which Uncle Kittredge holds the one feeble kerosene lamp between himself and a newspaper, Aunt Kittredge knits in silent meditation on blue yarn stockings, he knows how good it is to have the house filled with lights and people, jolly games going on in the parlour, and candy-pulling in the kitchen. All these delights were directly before Jason Kittredge as he dangled his legs from the stone wall and whittled away at the skewers which Clorinda, the "hired girl," had demanded of him, and yet his heart was as heavy as lead.
He did not even look up when his sister Minty came up the hill toward him. He knew it was Minty, because she was hop-skipping and humming, and he knew that Aunt Kittredge had sent her to Mrs. Deacon Preble's to get a recipe for snow pudding; she had said she "must have something real stylish, because she had invited the new minister and his daughter to dinner."
"Oh, Jason, don't you wish it was always going to be Thanksgiving Day after to-morrow?" Minty continued her hop-skipping; she went to and fro before the dejected figure on the wall. Minty was tall for twelve, and she had a very high forehead, which made Aunt Kittredge think that she was going to be "smart." Aunt Kittredge made her comb her hair straight back from the high forehead, and fasten it with a round comb; not a vestige of hair showed under Minty's blue hood, and her forehead looked bleak and cold, and her pale blue eyes were watery, and her new teeth were large and overlapped each other; but Aunt Kittredge said it was no matter, if she was only good and "smart."
"Why, Jason, is anything the matter?" Minty stopped, breathless, and the joy faded out of her face. Jason continued to whittle in gloomy silence. His hands were almost purple with cold, and the wind flapped his large pantaloons—they were Uncle Kittredge's old ones, and Aunt Kittredge never thought it worth the while to consider the fit if they were turned up so that he could walk in them.
"You don't care because the new minister and his daughter are coming?" pursued Minty. Jason's tastes, as she well knew, did not incline to ministers and schoolmasters as companions in merrymaking. "She's a big girl, almost sixteen, and she will go with Mary Ellen, and we shall have Mirandy and Augustus and the twins, and the Sedgell girls and Nehemiah Ham are coming in the evening, and we shall have such fun, and such lots to eat!"
"That's just like you. You're friv'lous. You don't know what an awful hard world it is. You haven't got a realizing sense," said Jason crushingly.
This last accusation was one with which Aunt Kittredge was accustomed to overwhelm Clorinda when she burned the pies or wore her best bonnet to evening meeting. Minty's face grew so long that it looked like the reflection of a face in a spoon, and the tears came into her eyes. It must be a hard world, since Jason found it so. He was much stouter-hearted than she; his round, snub-nosed, freckled face was generally as cheerful as the sunshine. Jason had his troubles—Minty well knew what they were—but he bore them manfully. He didn't like to have Clorinda use his hens' eggs when he was saving them to sell, and perhaps it was even more trying to be at school when the eggs man came around, and have Aunt Kittredge sell his eggs and put the money into her pocket. Jason wished to go into business for himself, and he had a high opinion of the poultry business for a beginning. Cyrus, their "hired man," had once lived with a man at North Edom who made fabulous sums by raising poultry. But Aunt Kittredge's peculiar views of the rights of boys interfered with his accumulation of the necessary capital. All these troubles Jason bore bravely. It must be some great misfortune that caused him to look so utterly despairing, and to accuse her of such dreadful things, thought poor Minty.
Jason took pity on her woful face. "P'raps you're not so much to blame, Mint. You don't know," he said, in a somewhat softened tone. "It's Aunt Kittredge."
Minty heaved a long, long sigh. It generally was Aunt Kittredge.