Then, with the treasured butter-and-egg money the turkey,
cranberries, nuts, and raisins were bought and smuggled into the house
and upstairs to the chamber of mystery.
Two days before Thanksgiving Cyrus came home to find a silent and almost
empty kitchen. His heart skipped a beat and his jaw fell open in
frightened amazement; then a step on the floor above sent the blood back
to his face and a new bitterness to his heart.
"So I ain't even good enough ter stay with!" he muttered. "Fool!--fool!"
he snarled, glaring at the oblong brown paper in his arms. "As if she'd
care for this--now!" he finished, flinging the parcel into the farthest
corner of the room.
Unhappy Cyrus! To him, also, had come a great idea. Thanksgiving was not
Christmas, to be sure, but if he chose to give presents on that day,
surely it was no one's business but his own, he argued. In the brown
paper parcel at that moment lay the soft, shimmering folds of yards upon
yards of black silk--and Huldah had been longing for a new black silk
gown. Yet it was almost dark when Cyrus stumbled over to the corner,
picked up the parcel, and carried it ruefully away to the shed-chamber.
Thanksgiving dawned clear and unusually warm. The sun shone, and the air
felt like spring.
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