The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1907-11-22
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, NOVEMBER D. 1901
A Thanksgiving Embassy.
BY AVERY ABBOTT.


When she put beside the plate knife,
fork and spoon she sighed again, and If she
had not been plump and dimpled, with
bright brown hair, bright blue eyes and
complexion like girls, she might have
looked forlorn.
There was undoubtedly crease in her
forehead when the lid of the copper tea
kettle danced up with a sputter and she
lifted it to the back of the shining cook
stove. Yet the small kitchen fairly radi
ated a cheEy coziness. The red stripes
in the clean rag carpet were scarcely less
fresh and bright than the scarlet geranium
blossoms in the window. The glass doors
of the dish -cupboard shone over even rows
of scalloped blue paper, and in front OF the
stove, on braided rug, great Maltese
cat purred with steady whirr. The
wood fire, too, was cracking happily, send
ing out right CLEANS about the hearth
and filling the room with a fragrant
warmth which was most grateful this late
November afternoon.
Mrs. Hills folded gray plaid shawl
over her head and pinned it under her
round chin, before she took an ear OF corn
from peach basket in sink cupboard and
started down the path toward a sagging
shed at the end of the garden. The small
plot of ground showed cherries surface
with rough clods where the potatoes had
oeen dug, few cabbage stumps and
patch of blackened tomato vines.
Midway of the path Mrs. Hills stopped
and looked with an added quicker of her
forehead, over an adjoining field, between
the opulent corn-shocks Of which great
pumpkins glowed like harvest moons. A
fock of turkeys passed across the rows in
one of those skimming runs which such
fowls seem to take by way of diversion,
The little widow scanned the birds sharply,
then, hurrying on, pulled open the shed
door. A half-dozen plump Plymouth
Rocks that had been scratching in the lit
ter outside hurried around the edges Of
her skirts with alert friendliness, but Mrs.
Hills stepped quickly through the shed
to small enclosure at the back, and, bend
ing down, peered into a large box, the
front of which was roughly Slated up with
key slaves. One of these awkward bars
had been pushed awry and the interior OF
the box showed only litter OF straw and
some kernels of corn Mrs. Hills dropped
Imply down upon the edge of the coop.
ooh y she said in tone of vexatlon
yerging on tears. For when one has nur-
tured the browning glory of festival din
ner through fuzzy and precarious infancy
to pompous and gobbling maturity, to find
only an empty coop On the day but
one before Thanksgiving, the situation Is
distressing in the extreme.
However, the trials of Mrs Hills were
deeper than can ordinarily be occasioned by
the truancy of hayward turkey gobbler.
Vicissitudes had begun for her ten years
before, when she had chosen to make Joe
Hills helmsman of her matrimonial bark
instead of entrusting the rudder to the
frmer though less gentle hand Of John
Dawson. But Joe's dropping blond mus
tache and appealing brown eyes had been
easily more winning than ali Johns sterl
ing virtues behind brusque and not es
pecially attractive front. And perhaps
she had been happy with Joe; at least, no
one-not even John Dawson-could make
assertion to the contrary. But pecuniarily
their existence had held only one certainty,
the law of diminishing returns.
Joe's frequent changes in occupation and
place of abode had been on a steadily de-
scending scale until at last he consistently
rounded off his existence by contracting the
lingering fever which made Mrs. Hills
widow. Her father had died not long
before, and it was with real sense of re-
lief and security that she took, as her
share of his property, the old house at the
edge of the village where she had been
born and which had been all too small for
the six brothers and sisters in their more
boisterous days. The other heirs sold the
land belonging to the place, and John
Dawson was the purchaser.
He had won the solid prosperity unat-
tainable by poor Joe Hills, but he still
lived alone with his sister in his comforta
BILE white house, and bowed with cold
courtesy when he met the widow on the
street. She, patient little soul, began her
solitary housekeeping with fair evidence
of content, but, though an ancestral roof
tree furnishes both shelter and solace, it
can neither be eaten nor worn, and Mrs
Hills found her small garden and occa-
sional plain sewing scant means of support.
Moreover, she often sighed when she set
out the one plate, cup and saucer, and
longed, or devotedly believed that she did,
to see across the table the dropping mus
tache and mild eyes of the amiable but
improvident Joe.
The chief joy to which her hospitable
heart looked forward each year, and for
which she planned with an almost religious
feryor, was the gathering together in the
old home at Thanksgiving time of her
brothers and sisters with their troop of
children. To this end were laid aside the
fairest products of her little garden, but
the buying of the turkey always came so
near to collapsing the limp sides of her
little purse, that this last year she had
thrifty determined upon raising the festi-
val sacrifice herself
Accordingly, early in the spring, four
big, freckled eggs had been conided to the
care of maternal Plymouth Rock, of
which Investment one full-grown turkey
had been the sole realization. However,
he seemed bent upon atoning for the pre-
mature detection of the rest of his family.
He took on pounds and pompousness with
4 fine disregard of fate, and by the time
The first frost nipped the morning glories
over the kitchen window Mrs. Hills
pride in her turkey was only equalled by
ais pride in himself, though that seemed
to burst him in purple apo
,lexy.