friends and had
spent their youth together, being in some way related, in a farm-house
in that neighborhood) had ever known; and when they had said as much as
this, they laughed out in very merriness of spirit, with a great winnow,
as the happy audience came streaming forth at the meeting-house door.
There were no cold, haughty, or distrustful faces now, as when they had
entered in an hour ago; the genial air of the little meeting-house had
melted away all frosts of that kind; and as they mingled under the sober
autumn-trees, loitering for conversation, inquiring after neighbors, old
folks whose infirmities kept them at home, the young children; they
seemed indeed, much more a company of brethren, embarked (as sailors
say) on a common bottom for happiness and enjoyment. The children were
the first to set out for home through the fields on foot; Peabody the
younger, little Sam and Robert being attended by the footman in livery,
whom Mrs. Carrack relieved from attendance at the rear of the coach.

If the quaint preacher had urged the rational enjoyment of the
Thanksgiving cheer from the pulpit, Mopsey labored with equal zeal at
home to have it worthy of enjoyment. At an early hour she had cleared
decks, and taken possession of the kitchen: kindling, with dawn, a great
fire in the oven for the pies, and another on the hearth for the turkey.
But it was from the oven, heaping it to the top with fresh relays of dry
wood, that she expected the Thanksgiving angel to walk in all his beauty
and majesty. In performance of her duty, and from a sense only that
there could be no thanksgiving without a turkey, she planted the tin
oven on the hearth, spitted the gobbler, and from time to time, merely
as a matter of absolute necessity, gave it a turn; but about the mouth
of the great oven she hovered constantly, like a spirit--had her head in
and out at the opening every other minute; and, when at last the pies
were slided in upon the warm bottom, she lingered there regarding the
change they were undergoing with the fond admiration with which a
connoisseur in sunsets hangs upon the changing colors of the evening
sky. The leisure this double duty allowed her was employed by Mopsey in
scaring away the poultry and idle young chickens which rushed in at the
back entrance of the kitchen in swarms, and hopped with yellow legs
about the floor with the racket of constant falling showers of corn.
Upon the half door opening on the front the red r