parlor in the chicken-house, both flat on their backs and gasping. Melindy did not know what ailed them; so I picked them up, slung them in my pocket-handkerchief, and took them home for Peggy to manipulate. I heard Melindy chuckle as I walked off, swinging them; and to be sure, when I brought the creatures in to Peggy, one of them kicked and lay still, and the other gasped worse than ever.
"What can we do?" asked Peggy, in the most plaintive voice, as the feeble "week! week!" of the little turkey was gasped out, more feebly every time.
"Give it some whiskey-punch!" growled Peter, whose strict temperance principles were shocked by the remedies prescribed for Peggy's ague.
"So I would," said Kate, demurely.
Now if Peggy had one trait more striking than another, it was her perfect, simple faith in what people said; irony was a mystery to her; lying, a myth,—something on a par with murder. She thought Kate meant so; and reaching out for the pretty wicker-flask that contained her daily ration of old Scotch whiskey, she dropped a little drop into a spoon, diluted it with water, and was going to give it to the turkey in all seriousness, when Kate exclaimed,—
"Peggy! when will you learn common sense? Who ever heard of giving whiskey to a turkey?"
"Why, you told me to, Kate!"
"Oh, give it to the thing!" growled Peter; "it will die, of course."
"I shall give it!" said Peggy, resolutely; "it does me good, and I will try."
So I held the little creature up, while Peggy carefully tipped the dose down its throat. How it choked, kicked, and began again with "week! week!" when it meant "strong!" but it revived. Peggy held it in the sun till it grew warm, gave it a drop more, fed it with bread-crumbs from her own plate, and laid it on the south window-sill. There it lay when we went to tea; when we came back, it lay on the floor, dead; either it was tipsy, or it had tried its new strength too soon, and, rolling off, had broken its neck! Poor Peggy!
There were six more hatched the next day, though, and I held many consultations with Melindy about their welfare. Truth to tell, Kate continued so cool to me, Peter's sprained ankle lasted so long, and Peggy could so well spare me from the little matrimonial tête-à-têtes that I interrupted, (I believe they didn't mind Kate!) that I took wonderfully to the chickens. Mrs. Tucker gave me rye-bread and milk of the best; "father" instructed me in the mysteries of cattle-driving; and Melindy, and Joe, and I, used to go strawberrying, or after "posies," almost every day. Melindy was a very pretty girl, and it was very good fun to see her blue eyes open and her red lips laugh over my European experiences. Really, I began to be of some importance at the farm-house, and to take airs upon myself, I suppose; but I was not conscious of the fact at the time.
After a week or two, Melindy and I began to have bad luck with the turkeys. I found two drenched and shivering, after a hail-and-thunder storm, and setting them in a basket on the cooking-stove hearth, went to help Melindy "dress her bow-pot," as she called arranging a vase of flowers, and when I came back the little turkeys were singed; they died a few hours after. Two more were trodden on by a great Shanghai rooster, who was so tall he could not see where he set his feet down; and of the remaining pair, one disappeared mysteriously,—supposed to be rats; and one falling into the duck-pond, Melindy began to dry it in her apron, and I went to help her; I thought, as I was rubbing the thing down with the apron, while she held it, that I had found one of her soft dimpled hands, and I gave the luckless turkey such a tender pressure that it uttered a miserable squeak and departed this life. Melindy all but cried. I laughed irresistibly. So there were no more turkeys. Peggy began to wonder what they should do for the proper Thanksgiving dinner, and Peter turned restlessly on his sofa, quite convinced that everything was going to rack and ruin because he had a sprained ankle.
"Can't we buy some young turkeys?" timidly suggested Peggy.
"Of course, if one knew who had them to sell," retorted Peter.
"I know," said I; "Mrs. Amzi Peters, up on the hill over Taunton, has got some."
"Who told you about Mrs. Peters's turkeys, Cousin Sam?" said Peggy, wondering.
"Melindy," said I, quite innocently.
Peter whistled, Peggy laughed, Kate darted a keen glance at me under her long lashes.
"I know the way there," said mademoiselle, in a suspiciously bland tone. "Can't you drive there with me, Cousin Sam, and get some more?"
"I shall be charmed," said I.
Peter rang the bell and ordered the horse to be ready in the single-seated wagon, after dinner. I was going right down to the farm-house to console Melindy, and take her a book she wanted to read, for no fine lady of all my New York acquaintance enjoyed a good book more than she did; but Cousin Kate asked me to wind some yarn for her, and was so brilliant, so amiable, so altogether charming, I quite forgot Melindy till dinner-time, and then, when that was over, there was a basket to be found, and we were off,—turkey-hunting! Down hill-sides overhung with tasselled chestnut-boughs; through pine-woods where neither horse nor wagon intruded any noise of hoof or wheel upon the odorous silence, as we rolled over the sand, past green meadows, and sloping orchards; over little bright brooks that chattered musically to the bobolinks on the fence-posts, and were echoed by those sacerdotal gentlemen in such liquid, bubbling, rollicking, uproarious bursts of singing as made one think of Anacreon's grasshopper
"Drunk with morning's dewy wine."
All these we passed, and at length drew up before Mrs. Peters's house. I had been here before, on a strawberrying stroll with Melindy,—(across lots it was not far,)—and having been asked in then, and entertained the lady with a recital of some foreign exploit, garnished for the occasion, of course she recognized me with clamorous hospitality.
"Why how do yew do, Mister Greene? I declare I ha'n't done a-thinkin' of that 'ere story you told us the day you was here, 'long o' Melindy." (Kate gave an ominous little cough.) "I was a-tellin' husband yesterday 't I never see sech a master hand for stories as you be. Well, yis, we hev got turkeys, young 'uns; but my stars! I don't know no more where they be than nothin'; they've strayed away into the woods, I guess, and I do'no' as the boys can skeer 'em up; besides, the boys is to school; h'm—yis! Where did you and Melindy go that day arter berries?"
"Up in the pine-lot, ma'am. You think you can't let us have the turkeys?"
"Dew tell ef you went up there! It's near about the sightliest place I ever see. Well, no,—I don't see how's to ketch them turkeys. Miss Bemont, she't lives over on Woodchuck Hill, she's got a lot o' little turkeys in a coop; I guess you'd better go 'long over there, an' ef you can't get none o' her'n, by that time our boys'll be to hum, an' I'll set 'em arter our'n; they'll buckle right to; it's good sport huntin' little turkeys; an' I guess you'll hev to stop, comin' home, so's to let me know ef you'll hev 'em."
Off we drove. I stood in mortal fear of Mrs. Peters's tongue,—and Kate's comments; but she did not make any; she was even more charming than before. Presently we came to the pine-lot, where Melindy and I had been, and I drew the reins. I wanted to see Kate's enjoyment of a scene that Kensett or Church should have made immortal long ago:—a wide stretch of hill and valley, quivering with cornfields, rolled away in pasture lands, thick with sturdy woods, or dotted over with old apple-trees, whose dense leaves caught the slant sunshine, glowing on their tops, and deepening to a dark, velvety green below, and far, far away, on the broad blue sky, the lurid splendors of a thunder-cloud, capped with pearly summits, tower upon tower, sharply defined against the pure ether, while in its purple base forked lightnings sped to and fro, and revealed depths of waiting tempest that could not yet descend. Kate looked on, and over the superb picture.
"How magnificent!" was all she said, in
