Jason started; a ray of hope flushed his freckled face.
"We can buy a big turkey over at Jonas Hicks's for all that money," continued Minty. And then she drew nearer to Jason, and added a thrilling whisper, "And we can hide Priscilla!"
Jason stared at her in amazement. He had never expected Minty to come to the front in an emergency. Perhaps the high forehead meant something after all. "She'll be after you about the money, you know," he said, with a significant nod toward the house.
"It's my own. I earned it picking berries and weeding old Mrs. Jackman's garden. It's in my bank, and the bank won't open till there's five dollars in it."
Jason's face darkened.
"But we can smash it," said Minty calmly.
Certainly the high forehead meant something.
Priscilla was hidden. The "smashing" was done in extreme privacy behind the stone wall of the pasture. Cyrus was bound over to secrecy, as was also Jonas Hicks, who, after some haggling, sold them his finest turkey for two dollars and thirty cents.
"Cyrus is gettin' real handy and accommodatin'," said Clorinda the next morning, when they were all in the kitchen, and Jason, ignobly arrayed in Clorinda's kitchen-belle apron, was chopping, and Minty was seeding raisins. "I expected nothin' but what I'd got to pick the white turkey, and he's fetched her in all picked and drawed."
"She don't weigh quite so much as I expected," said Uncle Kittredge, as he suspended the turkey on the hook of the old steelyards.